Allen Jackson NOW

Allen Jackson: February 20, 2025 | Allen Jackson Now

February 20, 2025 | S25:E220

Allen Jackson NOW is a lifeline for a struggling and anxious nation. A guiding hand for those who are not ready to give up, and for those who want to find a way past the negativity before things get worse. Americans still have hope, they are searching for the wisdom embedded in a Christian World View.

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Allen Jackson NOW | Allen Jackson: February 20, 2025 | Allen Jackson Now | February 20, 2025

Well.
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Good evening.
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I'm alan jackson, and welcome to nashville.
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How many of you wondered if the country's big media would
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Try to straighten itself out?
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After trump won back the white house for more than a year?
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They promoted kamala harris and joe biden,
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Spinning their stories every which way
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To make candidate trump look bad.
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But this time, it didn't work.
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And now their regular viewers are looking for truth elsewhere,
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Because the american people
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Have many ways of gathering the truth.
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With new sites, new
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Shows, reporters who live and work in the heartland,
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They heard the truth.
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They voted on the commonsense, conservative approach.
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And they're now witnessing a rebirth of a better nation.
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And maybe even world.
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Well, understanding how the media works
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Will help us better understand
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Why so many things have come out as they have.
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So tonight we've invited
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The veteran reporter, the honest reporter
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From many high level experiences.
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Doug mcelroy. welcome back doug.
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Great to see you, alan. thanks for having me.
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Let's rather than discuss what's in the news right now.
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I want to hear from you
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How certain things get on the air and others don't.
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One of the patterns it's been easy to detect
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Is that whatever trump says,
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The mainstream media takes the opposite side.
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It's a less
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Of an editorial judgment, and it seems more of a reflex to me.
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Is that right?
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There's a lot of truth in that, for sure.
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I think, trump derangement syndrome, not a recognized
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Psychological, diagnosis, is probably very real.
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And i think the distaste for donald trump is just so huge
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Among a lot of, legacy media that they do
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Reflexively react to whatever he has to say.
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You know, so
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Many of the stories end up being really inaccurate.
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The reports on usaid are a pretty good example.
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Elon musk and his crew have found
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Some of the most outlandish spending of taxpayer money.
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Something no reporter ever published.
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But instead of doing stories on what's been uncovered,
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They only report on the few cases
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Where certain groups
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Are not going to get american aid anymore,
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And how crippling that will be to them.
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It seems like a really significant imbalance.
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Am i hearing it correctly?
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I think you're hearing it precisely.
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Yeah, you're exactly right.
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And it's just an amazing thing to watch unfold
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Before our very eyes, because there have been
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Great examples in years pass
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Under both republican and democratic administrations
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About how we have to cut waste from the federal government.
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And there have been actual, documentations
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Of the amount of waste as, as recently
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As just a couple of years ago
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And the biden administration, there was all kinds
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Of documentation
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Of tremendous waste, fraud and abuse
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In the federal government and various agencies.
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But generally speaking, once
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It's identified, nothing is done about it.
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This is the first time, and in my awareness,
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Well, i shouldn't say the first time,
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But one of the first times in my awareness work
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And the administration has actually embarked upon
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Reducing waste, fraud and abuse in government and
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And people generally don't like it
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Because it's a republican administration.
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Let me remind you that the bill clinton administration
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Cut 400,000 jobs from the federal government.
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It was, al gore, the vice president of
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United states was put in charge of that.
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I remember very distinctly because language is a pet
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Peeve of mine, and i hate bureaucracies that he
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He developed the task force al gore did to try to, simplify
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The language
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In the federal register and across all of the agencies
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That didn't work.
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It's still as obtuse as it ever was,
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But they did manage to cut some 400,000 jobs
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From the federal government
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During the clinton administration
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To all eight years of the clinton administration.
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When you look at it, combined and nobody
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Complained about it back then, at least certainly
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Not to the extent that you're complaining about it right now.
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You know, one of the more troubling examples
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Of this dishonest reporting happened
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During joe biden's four years in the white house.
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Surely if they'd tried bob woodward, would bob woodward
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Or jake tapper
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Could have reported on biden's condition, but they didn't.
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And i wonder if they truly didn't know
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Or if they simply shared the mindset of the msnbc
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Morning host.
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Do you remember this?
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It was about a year ago.
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This version of biden
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Intellectually, analytically is the best biden ever.
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Not a close second, and i've known him for years.
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Just no comparison between joe biden and donald trump.
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Historians will look back and they will say,
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Why was this race close
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In february and early march?
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Because it makes no sense.
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You know, the only person who said anything about biden
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Was the judge who looked into
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The classified documents in his garage.
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The judge who interviewed him in person,
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He wrote that biden was a sympathy,
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Well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.
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Now, that's
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As close as we all got, and the media just shrugged it off.
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That's right.
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That was that was that was
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That was robert herr, who was a special prosecutor
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In his reason for not charging joe biden with crimes
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Was that he was a well-meaning old man.
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And it
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Was it was very, very telling indeed.
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But it was an outlier compared to what we heard
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From the mainstream media
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And the legacy media in this country.
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And, i mean, we're going to get
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Really into it with a heart of of
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Why this exists, how it came to be, the way it is.
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And it goes back a long time.
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And, you know, now that i'm retired,
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I can speak pretty freely
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About this kind of stuff because i saw
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Many of the origins of this
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In my early years in television news, especially,
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As an anchor and a reporter in washington, dc
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At some of the local tv affiliates in washington, dc,
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Specifically the nbc affiliate and the abc affiliate.
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And if you'll if you'll indulge me here,
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I want to give you an anecdote about how this works.
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This is this is the most benign reference i can give to the
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The bias that exists in and mainstream media.
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And a lot of it has to do not with some grand conspiracy,
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But with simply a like mindedness,
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With what sociologists call self-selection.
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Like minded people prefer gatherings of their own sort.
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For example, i'm a banjo player.
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I love bluegrass music.
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I go to bluegrass festivals.
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I know when i enter the gates of a bluegrass festival
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And pay my $80 for the three day festival
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That i'm going to be surrounded
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With people
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Who love the sound of the banjo when i go outside those gates,
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Not so much.
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So anyway, so it is with tv news.
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Let me give you this example right now. not ten.
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I forget the year 1989.
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I want to say 19. the early 90s.
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I was assigned at the nbc affiliate in washington,
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Dc to cover the million man march,
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Which was really a tremendous gathering.
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I don't know if it was a million people,
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But it was certainly several hundred thousand
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African-american men and their families coming
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To celebrate their heritage,
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Which was a difficult one in those states of america,
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Their standing in the political world
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And in this country right now, and future hopes and
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The hundreds of thousands of people came,
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As i remember, interviewing families.
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It was really touching.
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I remember a grandfather who had lived in segregation, hearing
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His grandchild on his shoulders, walking up the national mall.
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He was so proud to demonstrate to his grandson
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And his son with him,
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How far the advancement of african americans
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Had come in this country. and they hope for more.
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And that was part of my story of that day.
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As the main reporter covering the march, i was assigned
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Also, to do a wrap up for the evening newscast.
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And so i had to wait for the speech.
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The the center, the center point of of,
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The gathering that day was a speech by the rally's
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Organizer, the minister, louis farrakhan,
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Who you may know, it's got a very controversial past.
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And it was,
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A real problem for the million man march
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Because he had a history of anti-semitism,
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And sort of white hatred that that rubbed a lot of people
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The wrong way.
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Well, during his speech,
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He said this, i wrote this down, and i remember it
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From the piece i wanted to do that evening.
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It was not the center
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Part of my story that night, but it was a part of the story.
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This is a
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Quote from the minister louis farrakhan that day there.
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He said, in the middle of this
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Mall is the washington monument, 555ft high.
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But if we put a one in front of that 555ft, we get 1555.
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The year that our fathers landed
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On the shores of jamestown, virginia, as slaves.
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In the background is the jefferson and lincoln memorial,
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Each of which monuments is 19ft high.
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Abraham lincoln, the 16th president, thomas jefferson,
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The third president.
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And 16 and three makes 19 again.
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What is so deep about this? number 19.
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Why are we standing on the capitol steps today?
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That number 19, when you have a nine, you have a womb
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That is pregnant.
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And when you have one that is standing by the nine,
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It means that there's something secret that has to be unfolded.
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That's a direct quote from the minister, louis
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Farrakhan from the million man march that i was covering.
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I included that quote in my story that evening.
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My managing editor came into the edit booth
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And said, take that out.
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And i said, why?
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He said it.
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It's a quote.
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Look, here's the here's the soundbite.
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No, i said, you know, this is kind of crackpot stuff
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That he said here.
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And they said, we know it, but we don't want it in our story.
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Now imagine if donald trump had said that at a rally,
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It would be front and center on the cbs evening news, the abc
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Evening news, the nbc evening news, all the cables,
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With the exception of fox stickers.
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But it illustrates my point that they did not want to air
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That particular soundbite because it was a sensitive topic
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In history, which was,
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African-american majority city.
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Their viewership was a large percentage of african-americans.
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They did not want to offend their audience.
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That is a fundamental reality of a lot of the television news,
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Programing these days.
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They want their revenue.
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They want their ratings to say, i, they don't want to,
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You know, offend their audience in any way, shape or form.
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The same applies to, criticism.
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One local newscasts, of certain brands of cars
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Or their reliability ratings. why?
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Because car advertisers are the glue
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That holds the local tv newscast together.
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So they don't want to spend that. oh, wait.
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So that's a benign explanation for a lot of the bias we see
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There are more,
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Offensive, i should say, reasons for this kind of bias,
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That i think we're beginning to see right now.
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Certainly one of them is trump derangement syndrome,
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And just the reflexive dislike of donald trump that we've seen.
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There was a
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Great example of that, this this past weekend on cbs news
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As face the nation, where that was margaret
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Brennan had as a guest marco rubio, the secretary of state
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And she said to him, you know,
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That one of the reasons i'm paraphrasing here,
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But you said, you know, that one of the reasons
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For the rise of nazi germany and, ultimately the holocaust
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Was the granting of free speech in nazi germany.
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Well, thankfully, marco rubio, kept his cool
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And fought back and get that said,
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No, that's the that's the polar opposite of what happened.
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The nazis denied germans the right to free speech.
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So the idea that she would even suggest that
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Unless she wildly misspoke somehow
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Because of some technical error, which i doubt,
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But the reason that she said that very thing is deeply
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Disturbing and is reflective of a kind of mindset
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That is lost touch with reality.
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I think in many respects.
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This is an extremely helpful conversation.
00:12:05.850 --> 00:12:08.386
It's the insider's guide to watching american media.
00:12:08.386 --> 00:12:11.422
We'll have more with doug mckelvey in just a moment.
00:12:11.422 --> 00:12:14.392
Please stay with us.
00:12:14.392 --> 00:12:15.393
And if you're inspired, you can send an email
00:12:15.393 --> 00:12:17.195
To comments at alan jackson now.com.
00:12:17.195 --> 00:12:25.009
To comments at alan jackson now.com.
00:12:25.009 --> 00:12:28.273
We're back now
00:12:28.607 --> 00:12:29.741
With the veteran journalist and anchor doug mcelwee.
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Not long ago, i had the impression
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That the network with the best reporting
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Being first and being right, had the largest viewership
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And the largest group of viewers
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Meant that you had the most influence
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And major corporate owners happy as well.
00:12:43.322 --> 00:12:45.858
What happened to being first and right,
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And how did it get taken over by clickbait commentary and spin?
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That seems like a pretty significant shift
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In how the news gets reported.
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Was there a point in time or did you just gradually happen
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That way? doug?
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Well, it gradually happened.
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It was an evolution.
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Again, it's a multi-faceted problem,
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That had lots of origins and lots of reasons for being.
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I think the, you know, the cultural revolution
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Of the 1960s played a role in that.
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I think the assassination of,
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John f kennedy played a role in that
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Because it just it just destroyed.
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So many conventional,
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Ways of thinking
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In this country that, you know, we live in a democracy.
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We live in a republic.
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And, as long as we can hold that intact,
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Things are going to go well. but then.
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But then you have this, you know,
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Bright young shining star assassinated
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Before our very eyes.
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And it just threw us all asunder in some respects.
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The beatles coming to the united states
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That same year, changing music entirely.
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And and then
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We had the campus protests and the vietnam war, of course,
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Which is that the war, of course,
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Which was absolutely seminal in the revolution
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Which followed the civil rights movement,
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I think was was a huge component of that.
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The destruction of richard nixon,
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By the watergate scandal and particularly woodward
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And bernstein. you mentioned those names.
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They were held,
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On pedestals and terms of the world of journalism,
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For having destroyed a president of the united states
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Who i think most americans probably felt needed to leave
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Office, needed to resign or be put in prison or whatever.
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But they were held up, woodward and bernstein
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As the as the, highest plateau of journalism.
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And i think a lot of journalism schools started,
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Teaching that that was, again, the height of journalism.
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And a lot of people began
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To assume that rather than simply report the news
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That that changing society for the better
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Would be the way to go.
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That's what i want to do.
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That's why i want to enter journalism.
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That's why
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I want to be a reporter. i want to change the world.
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I want to make it a better place.
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That's idealistically a wonderful idea, but
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It all practicality.
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You have to keep in mind that for everybody
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Who thinks the world is becoming
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A better place, there's another person
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Who thinks the world is becoming a worse place.
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Remember that old expression?
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I think it was, i think reuters came up with this.
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That one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
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You know,
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I've always seen myself as an american reporter
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Who believes in the american ideals
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And an american constitution.
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So i kind of draw my my ethics at the end of the seashore,
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The united states, to be sure, others don't. but.
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But be that as it may, i think that that ideal,
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Wanting to change the world
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Became a mantra for a lot of young reporters.
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Idealistic reporters
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Became a mantra in the journalism schools
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Where young reporters were taught,
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And it was not necessarily a good thing.
00:15:59.484 --> 00:16:02.254
And it's it's led to these divisions.
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There were other factors.
00:16:04.489 --> 00:16:05.524
Certainly the creation of fox news was
00:16:05.524 --> 00:16:07.893
Was a another really seminal moment
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Because people saw this leftward drift of journalism.
00:16:10.429 --> 00:16:15.467
Well, doug mcelroy, thank you for the insider's view.
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If we get enough new questions on emails,
00:16:18.904 --> 00:16:20.972
We'll get you back here to help answer them.
00:16:20.972 --> 00:16:23.408
In the meantime, enjoy florida.
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Okay. we'll do it.
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When we come back.
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Some additional thoughts of my own.
00:16:29.181 --> 00:16:31.349
It's possible
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To navigate our way through this to find a positive solution.
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I'll be right back.
00:16:35.587 --> 00:16:42.006
I'll be right back.
00:16:42.006 --> 00:16:43.931
It's easy to say that with a change of administration,
00:16:44.998 --> 00:16:47.901
That the media will return to being fair.
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That's being naive.
00:16:51.105 --> 00:16:52.539
We're ignoring the facts on the ground
00:16:52.539 --> 00:16:54.341
And not paying attention to our reality.
00:16:54.341 --> 00:16:56.710
The legacy media has capitulated.
00:16:56.710 --> 00:16:59.079
They forfeited their role as the fourth estate.
00:16:59.079 --> 00:17:01.815
Journalism and the classic sense has morphed into propaganda.
00:17:01.815 --> 00:17:05.686
And it's not a healthy place for our culture.
00:17:05.686 --> 00:17:08.288
We can't afford to surrender free speech.
00:17:08.288 --> 00:17:10.624
Terms like misinformation and disinformation
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Should no longer be accepted as reasons for censorship.
00:17:13.260 --> 00:17:16.630
Disagreement is survivable.
00:17:16.630 --> 00:17:18.532
It's often even helpful.
00:17:18.532 --> 00:17:20.167
But censorship is not survivable.
00:17:20.167 --> 00:17:23.036
Censorship is a very significant step forward towards
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Authoritarian rule in all of our lives.
00:17:26.573 --> 00:17:29.776
And the church, tragically has self censored.
00:17:29.776 --> 00:17:32.946
We have censored ourselves with this insistence
00:17:32.946 --> 00:17:35.282
That we shouldn't talk about current events,
00:17:35.282 --> 00:17:37.417
And that we shouldn't talk about our faith in polite settings.
00:17:37.417 --> 00:17:40.888
We've hit the mute button
00:17:40.888 --> 00:17:41.955
Because we don't want to risk offending anyone.
00:17:41.955 --> 00:17:44.358
We don't want to be left
00:17:44.358 --> 00:17:45.559
Out of some social setting where we prefer to be included.
00:17:45.559 --> 00:17:48.529
We have abandoned our assignment.
00:17:48.529 --> 00:17:51.031
You see, faith is not just personal, it's cultural.
00:17:51.031 --> 00:17:54.334
I promise you that if you lived in saudi
00:17:54.334 --> 00:17:56.036
Arabia under a muslim worldview, you'd quickly understand
00:17:56.036 --> 00:17:59.173
That their faith influences every decision.
00:17:59.173 --> 00:18:02.176
Well, we live in a nation where
00:18:02.176 --> 00:18:03.343
There has been historically a judeo christian worldview.
00:18:03.343 --> 00:18:06.446
We have to have the courage to learn patterns
00:18:06.446 --> 00:18:08.949
Of communicating and expressing our opinions.
00:18:08.949 --> 00:18:11.752
It's that worldview
00:18:11.752 --> 00:18:13.253
Be shared with the generations who follow us.
00:18:13.253 --> 00:18:15.756
If we don't, we lose our freedoms.
00:18:15.756 --> 00:18:18.425
If we do, i believe we'll see.
00:18:18.425 --> 00:18:20.460
God bless america yet again.
00:18:20.460 --> 00:18:23.197
And that, i promise, brings more reasons for hope than despair.
00:18:23.197 --> 00:18:27.267
We'll be right back with your emails.
00:18:27.267 --> 00:18:35.011
We'll be right back with your emails.
00:18:35.011 --> 00:18:36.855
Thank you for taking the time to send us your thoughts.
00:18:37.923 --> 00:18:40.793
Your emails are an important part of our program preparation.
00:18:40.793 --> 00:18:44.930
Don d emailed.
00:18:45.264 --> 00:18:46.565
Why don't those in congress
00:18:46.565 --> 00:18:47.800
Who are screaming about ddos give up their paychecks
00:18:47.800 --> 00:18:51.036
If they're really serious about addressing the nation's debt?
00:18:51.036 --> 00:18:54.206
So it's not just a show called him out.
00:18:54.206 --> 00:18:57.876
Well, you know, don, it's not their paychecks that i think
00:18:57.876 --> 00:19:00.145
Is the real problem.
00:19:00.145 --> 00:19:01.413
I think what makes me curious
00:19:01.413 --> 00:19:02.681
Is how so many of those people move to washington,
00:19:02.681 --> 00:19:05.718
And that's their primary job, and they become very,
00:19:05.718 --> 00:19:08.854
Very wealthy multimillionaires
00:19:08.854 --> 00:19:10.823
That didn't come from those paychecks.
00:19:10.823 --> 00:19:12.758
Something else is going on, and i hope dodge
00:19:12.758 --> 00:19:15.127
Makes that public for all of us to know.
00:19:15.127 --> 00:19:18.264
And then christine wrote, i appreciate your show.
00:19:18.264 --> 00:19:20.966
I'm reading through the bible reading plan
00:19:20.966 --> 00:19:22.768
For the first time ever and it is terrific.
00:19:22.768 --> 00:19:25.337
Great encouragement.
00:19:25.337 --> 00:19:26.572
Thank you.
00:19:26.572 --> 00:19:27.773
I'm also giving my neighbors your bible reading schedule.
00:19:27.773 --> 00:19:30.743
Christine, i appreciate your willingness to participate.
00:19:30.743 --> 00:19:33.712
That little bit of discipline and reading through
00:19:33.712 --> 00:19:35.514
Your bible daily, through the bible.
00:19:35.514 --> 00:19:37.149
In a year,
00:19:37.149 --> 00:19:37.983
We'll do
00:19:37.983 --> 00:19:39.184
More to change your faith than any single thing i know.
00:19:39.184 --> 00:19:41.887
And in a season of turmoil, confusion
00:19:41.887 --> 00:19:44.423
And outright deception, that daily injection of truth
00:19:44.423 --> 00:19:48.661
Changes everything.
00:19:48.661 --> 00:19:50.496
Well, i want to thank you for
00:19:51.130 --> 00:19:52.564
Taking the time to watch our program.
00:19:52.564 --> 00:19:53.932
If you missed the live broadcast,
00:19:53.932 --> 00:19:55.768
You can go to youtube and catch it.
00:19:55.768 --> 00:19:57.269
It's posted every evening.
00:19:57.269 --> 00:19:58.704
You can see it at your leisure if you haven't yet.
00:19:58.704 --> 00:20:01.674
Take a moment
00:20:01.674 --> 00:20:02.608
To send your emails to comments at alan
00:20:02.608 --> 00:20:04.209
Jackson now.com your feedback and questions.
00:20:04.209 --> 00:20:07.946
We do a lot to shape the show.
00:20:07.946 --> 00:20:10.082
Well, i'm alan jackson and you have a wonderful evening.
00:20:10.082 --> 00:20:10.082

Allen Jackson: February 20, 2025 | Allen Jackson Now

February 20, 2025 | S25:E220

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