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CENK: I think the news in this country is fundamentally broken. I think there is a way
to fix it and it's for the news to actually bring facts to their audience.
[Music]
I think that news today unfortunately is enormously problematic. I think that the CNNs of the
world, and I just use it as a symbol more than anything else—establishment media—calls
everything even when things aren't even. Y'know, if sports reporters operated in the same way
that news reporters do these days, it would be laughable. They would say okay well the
Cowboys and the Giants played last night and the Cowboys say they won and the Giants say
they won. But who won!? There was a score! And in this case, it happened to be the Cowboys.
That's what you gotta report. But unfortunately whenever I turn to CNN, they say the Republicans
say this and the Democrats say that and I keep yelling at my TV set WHO CARES WHAT THEY
SAY! Tell me what actually happened and there are real facts. People like to say well it's
all opinion. That's not true. So unfortunately nearly 70 percent of this country thought
that Saddam Hussein had personally attacked us on 9/11 when we went to war with Iraq.
It was an objective fact that the establishment media failed to get through to the American
people which was that Saddam Hussein had not attacked us. That is not an opinion. That's
a fact. And oftentimes there's an enormous difference to the government, to the Pentagon.
If you say on television, hey I don't believe the Pentagon, they'll look at you like you've
got three eyes. What!? You're crazy! That's the Pentagon! I'm like, are you guys crazy?
The job of the government—I'm sorry the media—is to challenge the government. Does
the Pentagon lie? Of course, of course it lies! Every single story we've been told from
Jessica Lynch to Pat Tillman to y'know the drone strikes, to even the Bin Laden killing…
the first story that comes out is almost invariably fiction. Part of the reason is that they know
that's what 90% will pay attention to—the first story. And they don't see the correction
several weeks later when they say oh by the way, bin Laden was not hiding behind his wife,
he did not have a weapon and we just kinda executed him. Right? So I think the news in
this country is fundamentally broken. I think there is a way to fix it and it's for the
news to actually challenge the government as they are supposed to do to inform the state,
to do it aggressively with republicans and democrats and actually bring facts to their
audience.
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We do two things at The Young Turks, right? So one is to bring people information and
other is to entertain them because as Walt Disney said, if you try to inform people first
and entertain them second, you'll have no one to entertain. If you try to entertain
first and then inform, you'll have an audience to actually inform. What I want to do is I
want to convey that to the audience so that they're entertained by the news as I am, they're
as interested, fascinated by the news as I am, so that's part of our mission and then
the second part is once we have their attention, we'd like to give you the actual facts. And
so obviously we have a perspective, we don't hide that and we're very honest with the audience
about that, but most of all we tell people what the reality is. Whether it's budget numbers,
whether it's numbers on the war, anything that entails cold hard reality. That's what
we're into.
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