Speaker 1: Pushkin ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to the Monk Debates. Not
Speaker 1: long ago, a few thousand people gathered up Roy Thompson
Speaker 1: Hall in Toronto, the fanciest performance space in the city,
Speaker 1: to hear a debate parliamentary style opening statements, the buttles
Speaker 1: closing arguments. So I want all of us to think
Speaker 1: tonight carefully on our debate motion. Be it resolved, do
Speaker 1: not trust the mainstream media. Speaking for the resolution were
Speaker 1: two prominent journalists. My name is Matt taibe I've been
Speaker 1: a reporter for thirty years, and I argue for the
Speaker 1: resolution you should not trust the mainstream media. Tayebee was
Speaker 1: one of the people Elon Musk turned to when he
Speaker 1: took over Twitter to publish on Twitter the so called
Speaker 1: Twitter Files, with the intent of showing that liberals were
Speaker 1: meddling with free speech. Matt Taibee has a massive online following.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the press. My father was a reporter,
Speaker 1: my stepmother was a reporter, my godparents are reporters. Basically
Speaker 1: every adult I knew growing up was a reporter. So
Speaker 1: I actually love the news business, but I'm mourned for it.
Speaker 1: It's destroyed itself by getting away from its basic function,
Speaker 1: which is just to tell us what's happened. Tibe's partner
Speaker 1: was the prominent English journalist Douglas Murray, Oxford educated, beautiful suit,
Speaker 1: a certain international man of mystery. Thanks Yapo Fair, it's
Speaker 1: a great pleasure to be here. As about Yad said,
Speaker 1: I've coming a rather long away from the front lines
Speaker 1: of the Ukraine conflict because I like to see these
Speaker 1: things with my own eyes for myself and to come
Speaker 1: to my own conclusions. I came out through Moldova the
Speaker 1: other day, through London, then got to Toronto, and friend
Speaker 1: of mine and said, why are you going to Toronto?
Speaker 1: I said, an invitation to Toronto in late November. Who
Speaker 1: on Earth says no to that? Only a madman would
Speaker 1: say no to that. On the other side, defending the
Speaker 1: mainstream media was the New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg,
Speaker 1: a monk debate veteran one of America's strongest liberal voices.
Speaker 1: Think about the big stories of the last five years
Speaker 1: or so, you know, from the Trump presidency to COVID
Speaker 1: to the war in Ukraine. Now, if you had just
Speaker 1: followed the CBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: the BBC. They've all got some things wrong, but in
Speaker 1: terms of the big stories, if you paid attention to
Speaker 1: the mainstream media, you were likely to be much safer
Speaker 1: and much closer to the truth then if you followed
Speaker 1: the kind of contrarians, if you followed the people who
Speaker 1: were saying, don't trust the mainstream media, trust these alternative
Speaker 1: sources of information. Taibe Murray Goldberg, and then Michelle's debating
Speaker 1: partner is a Canadian journalist. Yes, I will claim him
Speaker 1: as one of our own, veteran New Yorker staff writer,
Speaker 1: a podcasting sensation who doesn't love revisionist history, and an
Speaker 1: internationally acclaimed author. Lads and gentleman, Malcolm Cladwell, you're listening
Speaker 1: to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood.
Speaker 1: This episode is about what happened when Michelle Goldberg and
Speaker 1: I attempted to defend the honor of the mainstream media
Speaker 1: against its many enemies. I entered this battle to cheers
Speaker 1: from my hometown Craft. I grew up not far away,
Speaker 1: and I went to college in Toronto about a mile
Speaker 1: from the theater. This whole evening was putting a pep
Speaker 1: in my step. I've met with Michelle that morning at
Speaker 1: breakfast at our hotel, I said to her, We're going
Speaker 1: to win this thing. How could we not? This is Canada.
Speaker 1: If anyone is going to trust the mainstream media, it's Canadians.
Speaker 1: I wrote out my opening comments on the plane, had
Speaker 1: a lovely visit with my mom, put on my snappiest
Speaker 1: suit jacket. Then strode out on stage and warmly shook
Speaker 1: the moderator's hand because we want to know, are you
Speaker 1: open to changing your mind over the course of what
Speaker 1: you're going to hear in the next ninety minutes. Can
Speaker 1: you be persuaded to move from the pro camp into
Speaker 1: the con camp or vice versa. I should let you
Speaker 1: know before we get too far along. Then I am
Speaker 1: not someone who gets nervous. I don't get stage fright.
Speaker 1: I am the son of a man whose personal credo
Speaker 1: was nothing will ever happen. And that's how I felt
Speaker 1: on the evening of the Monk debate. So the room
Speaker 1: was packed. I felt the surge of love from my countryman,
Speaker 1: and Michelle was on fire. However, if you followed the
Speaker 1: mainstream media, you knew that COVID was airborne. You knew
Speaker 1: that it was more serious than the flu, and you
Speaker 1: knew that the vaccines were likely to protect you. The
Speaker 1: COVID contrarians, the contrarian media, the one who were saying
Speaker 1: not to trust kind of mainstream sources of opinion. We're
Speaker 1: saying this is not this is just another flu. Deaths
Speaker 1: are going to be six thousand. The media doesn't want
Speaker 1: to tell you. I mean, Matt wrote this several times.
Speaker 1: The media doesn't want to tell you about Ivermectin. She
Speaker 1: had Taibe and Murray on their heels. In the run
Speaker 1: up to the invasion of Ukraine. Again, I think Matt
Speaker 1: said that, you know, the media is over hyping this,
Speaker 1: that people are kind of taking stenography from the Biden
Speaker 1: administration that Russia actually is probably not going to invade.
Speaker 1: When it was my turn to speak, I tried to
Speaker 1: build on what Michelle said. The mainstream media was right
Speaker 1: about things like COVID and Ukraine because it's a profession
Speaker 1: with standards and rules and a long tradition of searching
Speaker 1: for the truth. The non mainstream media is a set
Speaker 1: of institutions that are outside of that tradition, that have
Speaker 1: an open and not a closed platform. And you cannot
Speaker 1: have an open platform and simultaneously adhere to a strict
Speaker 1: set of professional norms. You cannot say anyone can become
Speaker 1: a doctor and then complain when the surgeon takes out
Speaker 1: your spleen in thinking that it's your gall pattern right now,
Speaker 1: Why am I making such a big deal about this,
Speaker 1: Because trust is not about content. Trust is about process.
Speaker 1: I got my journalistic training at the Washington Post, one
Speaker 1: of the great newspapers in the world. I learned about
Speaker 1: that process, about what it means to respect the truth
Speaker 1: from some of the greatest journalists of my generation. This
Speaker 1: was from the heart. We're nailing this, I thought to myself.
Speaker 1: And then I can't sit here and listen to Malcolm
Speaker 1: Gladwell talking about fact checking and the importance of it
Speaker 1: not to get to mean. Malcolm. I read your book
Speaker 1: David and Goliath. The chapter on Northern Ireland is more
Speaker 1: filled with inaccuracies than any other chapter in a non
Speaker 1: fiction book I have read. It is having written a
Speaker 1: not very well selling but widely acclaimed book on Northern
Speaker 1: Ireland myself, my book on Northern Ireland didn't sell anywhere
Speaker 1: near as much as yours did, Malcolm, but mine was
Speaker 1: filled with facts. Oh God, all of us have had
Speaker 1: the dream when we're walking down our high school corridor
Speaker 1: and we realize suddenly we're not wearing any pants. That
Speaker 1: was me in that moment, the stage of Roy Thimeson Hall,
Speaker 1: in front of a few thousand people, suddenly realizing this
Speaker 1: is not going well. It's so strange hearing you debate, Malcolm,
Speaker 1: because you listen to nothing that your opponents say. It's
Speaker 1: quite extraordinary. I've met it before, but never quite so
Speaker 1: badly as it occurs in you. You keep saying things
Speaker 1: that neither of us have said, and then you try
Speaker 1: to pathologize what we say. Now, Malcolm, why don't you
Speaker 1: listen to what comes of our out of our mouths
Speaker 1: and try to learn something from it? As I am
Speaker 1: with you this evening, But at the moment, all I
Speaker 1: get is you dismissing every single story we come up with,
Speaker 1: every egregious failure of the mainstream media. A friend of
Speaker 1: mine afterwards texted me to say, why didn't you tell
Speaker 1: me you were up against Douglas Murray. I would have
Speaker 1: warned you to stay home. A simple YouTube search would
Speaker 1: have shown me that he's a regular at the fabled
Speaker 1: Oxford Debating Union, a master of the cut and thrust.
Speaker 1: But I beg you to actually consider the fact that
Speaker 1: what we are describing is, even if you think not
Speaker 1: as accurate as you would like, an expression of a
Speaker 1: problem that is going on in our societies. Functioning, functioning
Speaker 1: liberal democracies need to have trust in their media. And
Speaker 1: the best that your site has been able to come
Speaker 1: up with so far tonight is to say, we get
Speaker 1: things wrong quite often, but you should trust us. You
Speaker 1: can't see it listening as you are. But Murray had
Speaker 1: the room in the palm of his hand. Take the
Speaker 1: hunter Biden's story. Oh, here we go. I'm sorry. Of
Speaker 1: course you don't end to that kind of course. Of
Speaker 1: course you don't want to here at Malcolm. Of course
Speaker 1: you wouldn't because it goes against your ideological presumptions. In
Speaker 1: the Monk debate, the audience votes on the resolution once
Speaker 1: before the debate and then again after the debate is over,
Speaker 1: and the winner is the side that causes the most
Speaker 1: people to change their minds. Remember the resolution that night was,
Speaker 1: be it resolved, do not trust the mainstream media. Let's
Speaker 1: just quickly review where we started out tonight's debate. It
Speaker 1: was pretty much a split opinion. If I believe it
Speaker 1: was forty eight in favor, fifty two opposed. We then
Speaker 1: asked you how many could change your mind. So let's
Speaker 1: see what happened of the last ninety minutes. Did either
Speaker 1: team of these debaters swing opinion one way or another?
Speaker 1: There we go sixty seven percent in favor of the motion,
Speaker 1: thirty three percent of post It was the biggest swing
Speaker 1: in opinion in the history of the Monk debates. We
Speaker 1: got cream. I went back to my hotel room, laid
Speaker 1: down on my bed, stared at the ceiling, and made
Speaker 1: the mistake of checking social media. Malcolm gave the perfect
Speaker 1: talk to show exactly why nobody trusts his media. Malcolm
Speaker 1: Gladwell has failed as an intellectual in this debate. Wow,
Speaker 1: you got owned and you were so smug and arrogant
Speaker 1: as you were getting known be better. You've lost my respect.
Speaker 1: This was a funeral for Malcolm Gladwell's reputation. Gladwell's not
Speaker 1: half as smart as I thought. He was. Just watched
Speaker 1: Malk get his butt kicked by Doug and really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: I had hit rock bottom. What do you do after
Speaker 1: you've been humiliated? You call your mother? Of course, Tex Spoile,
Speaker 1: Max style. In English, it says when things go wrong,
Speaker 1: convert them to something that is desirable. And the first
Speaker 1: thing my mother did when I asked her maternal reassurance
Speaker 1: was remind me of an expression from her native Jamaica.
Speaker 1: This is my mom's first solo appearance on Revisionist History.
Speaker 1: By the way, what kind of son makes his mother
Speaker 1: wait eight years for a cameo? I want to go
Speaker 1: back over the pronunciation of the words in dialect pronounced
Speaker 1: and then spell them out for me, just so I
Speaker 1: can see in my mind. Okay, the expression take spoil
Speaker 1: t e K. Yeah, it's it's a it's a version
Speaker 1: of take, yeah, take what is spoiled? Because we do
Speaker 1: not use the rounded vowels in Jamaica. They're all broad
Speaker 1: a vowels. We instead of saying spoil, we say spoil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they're all English words. Take, spoil, make style. Those
Speaker 1: are four English words, but they're just pronounced differently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's beautifully economical, exactly that. It's the economy and also
Speaker 1: the humor, which is which which is also striking. Put
Speaker 1: it in a sentence in your best Jamaican dialect. We
Speaker 1: don't use it in a sentence. Can you use it
Speaker 1: as a commentary on a situation. Here is someone walking
Speaker 1: along in a dress that does not fit with what
Speaker 1: is commonly being used, and she says, well, midair, you
Speaker 1: watch and see everybody will be wearing a dress like
Speaker 1: this soon. May I take spoile make style. This was
Speaker 1: her moral instruction to me in typically elliptical choice Glabo fashion,
Speaker 1: take lemons and make lemonade, take spoil and make style.
Speaker 1: So what did I do? I went straight to the top.
Speaker 1: I got in touch with the local legend of New
Speaker 1: York debating K M. D. Collendria aka DICO, founder of
Speaker 1: the Brooklyn Debate League. I told Dico about the very
Speaker 1: public undressing suffered on the stage of Roy Thompson Hall,
Speaker 1: and DICO said, you need to come to Brooklyn, And
Speaker 1: so I did, all the way to the Crown Heights
Speaker 1: neighborhood in what used to be the old Hebrew Hospital,
Speaker 1: Narrow Hallway, cats, everyone eating big bulls of pasta, Franklin
Speaker 1: Avenue shuttle lumbering along in the background, George, Oh, you
Speaker 1: can't do that. During the podcast, really, Dico had put
Speaker 1: together a dream team of three to analyze my performance.
Speaker 1: Cesan Kasabi, Jonathan Conyers, and Dico himself. Jonathan is built
Speaker 1: like a linebacker. Big James Hardenbeard works as a respiratory
Speaker 1: therapist when he's not writing books and teaching debate. Csan
Speaker 1: is thirty something, extra bird charismatic. In the John Grisham
Speaker 1: version of his life, he would be a trial lawyer
Speaker 1: who would win a ten billion dollar verdict from the
Speaker 1: jury in Mississippi. Dico is reserved, studied philosophy Yale, Irish
Speaker 1: and Italian in background, and somewhere along the line converted
Speaker 1: to Judaism and went to rabbinical school. I sat down
Speaker 1: to Deco's kitchen table. Each of the three had pages
Speaker 1: of densely written notes in front of them they had prepared.
Speaker 1: Jonathan was to my left. I started with him, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: can you speak to the Was the tone different from
Speaker 1: the debates here used to with students? So that's a
Speaker 1: very good question. So I'll answer this in two ways.
Speaker 1: The tone that you had throughout the debate was very
Speaker 1: similar to some of the students that I do work with,
Speaker 1: and that's what I teach them. Not I have the
Speaker 1: thickest kit in the world. Now I want to just
Speaker 1: pile on Oh they piled on Sissan was next, And
Speaker 1: I think what I want to explore is the sort
Speaker 1: of disconnect between the things that you thought should have
Speaker 1: mattered to the audience and what actually turned out to
Speaker 1: matter to the audience. Bendico, what was your strategy? Why
Speaker 1: do you think you want like if you talked us through,
Speaker 1: like your offense on that debate, Like why do you
Speaker 1: think you won? I thought that. I mean it was,
Speaker 1: to be honest, begin with a certain degree of arrogance
Speaker 1: that I thought. I just couldn't imagine how anyone could
Speaker 1: legitimately argue that the mainstream media was worse than the alternative.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, let's start there. If I assume that most
Speaker 1: people were on my side before I began, then why
Speaker 1: was I even debating? Debating is persuasion. It's based on
Speaker 1: the idea that there are people listening who don't agree
Speaker 1: with you, and your job is to change their mind.
Speaker 1: It's not a conversation. It's not you say what you think,
Speaker 1: I say what I think. It's a contest adjudicated by
Speaker 1: a third party, and the winner is a person who
Speaker 1: does the best job of client coming inside the head
Speaker 1: of that third party. Because ultimately, the wind condition of
Speaker 1: debate is the judge circle in your name. Cissan was
Speaker 1: the first to respond. Ultimately, it's figuring out what's important
Speaker 1: to that person, and how do I show them that
Speaker 1: this thing that I'm advocating for functions under a value
Speaker 1: system that they hold. I think that's what's important about
Speaker 1: debate and an empathetic It's an intellectual exercise and empathy. Empathy.
Speaker 1: I just failed the first test of debating. I should
Speaker 1: have put myself inside the heads of those in the
Speaker 1: audience who didn't trust the mainstream media and then try
Speaker 1: and bring them around. Second related point. If you watch
Speaker 1: the whole ninety minute debate on YouTube, which for the
Speaker 1: love of God I dearly hope you do not, you
Speaker 1: will notice that mister Murray and I did not get along.
Speaker 1: At a few points. I called him Doug, to which
Speaker 1: he took great fence and called me Malk. Well, Malk,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to take this more seriously than
Speaker 1: you did in your endless creation of strong men, which
Speaker 1: just is ceaseless. This evening, after the debate was over,
Speaker 1: Murray tweeted and retweeted word of his victory fourteen times.
Speaker 1: He's that kind of guy. But my advisers at the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Debate League were not happy about my antipathy towards
Speaker 1: mister Murray. If reading the mind of the judge requires empathy,
Speaker 1: then how is pursuing some personal vendetta going to help matters?
Speaker 1: How do you engage in the delicate utter persuasion if
Speaker 1: you're getting all emotional. I tried to explain I didn't
Speaker 1: know Douglas Murray much at all. So I did a
Speaker 1: little research into Douglas Murray, and it turns out the
Speaker 1: Douglas Murray without meaning. I'm not intending to demean him,
Speaker 1: but he is someone. He is one of those english people,
Speaker 1: white english people who objects to the number of non
Speaker 1: white people who have moved to England in the last
Speaker 1: fifty years. I'm actually not exaggerating here. Let me read
Speaker 1: to from a speech Murray once gave. It is late
Speaker 1: in the day, but Europe still has time to turn
Speaker 1: around the demographic time bomb, which will soon see a
Speaker 1: number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It
Speaker 1: has to All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop.
Speaker 1: In a case of a further genocide such as that
Speaker 1: in the Balkans, sanctuary would be given on a strictly
Speaker 1: temporary basis. This should also be enacted retrospectively. Those who
Speaker 1: are currently in Europe having fled tyrannies should be persuaded
Speaker 1: back to the countries which they fled from once the
Speaker 1: tyrannies that were the cause of their flight have been removed.
Speaker 1: That last sentence from Murray is what throws me. Immigrants
Speaker 1: from certain places should be persuaded back to the countries
Speaker 1: from which they fled because the whole thing, as he
Speaker 1: does with on Andrew Sullivan's podcast where he talks about
Speaker 1: his dismay that many there are many cities in England
Speaker 1: now where whites are in the minority. Now, my mother
Speaker 1: happens to be one of those people who was a
Speaker 1: black woman who emigranted to England in nineteen sixty three
Speaker 1: or whatever, sixty two. So she's talk in the fifties.
Speaker 1: He's talking about me. So he's talking about my mother, right,
Speaker 1: So this is like it was It's it's street for me.
Speaker 1: It's like that dude is that dude is one of
Speaker 1: the you know, people used to shout the end where
Speaker 1: to my mom when she walked down the street in
Speaker 1: England in nineteen fifty or whatever, and I'm in my mind,
Speaker 1: I'm imagining he's one of those people, right, So it's
Speaker 1: like that's what was happening when I was getting rolled up.
Speaker 1: I was like, I walked in thinking he's a piece
Speaker 1: of shit. That's what I realized. Now. You can't do that.
Speaker 1: If you do that, you've lost before you've even started.
Speaker 1: This is why I'm in high school. Debate. You have
Speaker 1: to prepare both sides beforehand, and you find out whether
Speaker 1: you are for or against the resolution on the day
Speaker 1: of the debate. They don't want you to be yourself.
Speaker 1: And again, like you know, Deco could attested as more
Speaker 1: than anybody. DECO has had students who parents have just
Speaker 1: been deported or on the verge of being report they
Speaker 1: didn't have to go and speak about open borders and
Speaker 1: immigration and don't know which side of defense they have
Speaker 1: to debate on. That is tough for fourteen fifteen year
Speaker 1: old who after they give a speech I have to
Speaker 1: go cry because they miss their dad or mama. They
Speaker 1: don't know if ices come in or I can't do this.
Speaker 1: I can't do that when I get it, I have
Speaker 1: been there. There were times where I felt racism occurring
Speaker 1: or people told me you can't use your personal story.
Speaker 1: That's not fair. This rich kid don't understand what it's
Speaker 1: like to be poor, so don't talk about that. So
Speaker 1: it happens. We have to come in and understand that
Speaker 1: debates are not personal and we have to talk about
Speaker 1: these topics because we can't have dialog, we can't have respect,
Speaker 1: and all is loss. So I'm going to challenge you, Malcolm,
Speaker 1: to say, if they can control the appoliser, if they
Speaker 1: can understand that we can have real conversations, so can you.
Speaker 1: Our culture tells us to be authentic and put our
Speaker 1: feelings first, But if you're trying to win a debate,
Speaker 1: your focus needs to be on your opponent's feelings, how
Speaker 1: their mind works. Lesson. Number one, don't be yourself. It's
Speaker 1: a dead end. Okay. Second lesson, All of my advisers
Speaker 1: at the Brooklyn Debate League were baffled by a crucial
Speaker 1: moment early in the debate, this moment in particular. And
Speaker 1: nobody is saying that non mainstream media don't have frailties.
Speaker 1: Of course they do. The simple proposal in front of
Speaker 1: the audience tonight is whether or not you can trust
Speaker 1: the mainstream media. That is that you don't need anything else.
Speaker 1: You don't need any other information from else where. You
Speaker 1: can just turn on CBC in the evening and you
Speaker 1: know you've got your stuff. You can pick up the
Speaker 1: New York Times the Washington Post in the morning and
Speaker 1: you know that there's no spin on the story. It's
Speaker 1: absolutely accurate reporting. The debate connoisseur and SSAN loved this
Speaker 1: little move. What Murray was saying was it, if you
Speaker 1: have even the slightest doubt about the perfection of the
Speaker 1: mainstream media, then you have to vote for his side,
Speaker 1: and no institution can meet that standard. It's like saying,
Speaker 1: unless all prescription drugs are guaranteed to act perfectly every
Speaker 1: time without side effects or complications, you can't trust prescription drugs.
Speaker 1: It's nuts they talk to this topic don't trust mainstream media,
Speaker 1: and made the central question of the debate be are
Speaker 1: there political biases in mainstream media? As long as that's
Speaker 1: the question that the audiences asking themselves to make the winner,
Speaker 1: you lose. What my side should have said was, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, the way you guys are defining the resolution
Speaker 1: makes no sense. Ssan said that then I'd be free
Speaker 1: to offer a simple alternative, something like in a scenario
Speaker 1: where a non mainstream news source and a mainstream new
Speaker 1: source directly disagree with each other, and we have no
Speaker 1: way of discerning who's right based on what we have
Speaker 1: available to us. Who should we give the benefit of
Speaker 1: the doubt too? I think that leans a lot more
Speaker 1: in your way. But we didn't say that. We sat
Speaker 1: there and let our opponents stack the deck against us.
Speaker 1: Why DECO had a hunch. Did you write down any
Speaker 1: notes while your opponents were speaking? What were you doing? Well?
Speaker 1: That was I was scribbling furiously. I was the only
Speaker 1: one who was. But I realized they were saying or
Speaker 1: what you were thinking both, But I realized it inhibited
Speaker 1: my ability to listen to them, So I was so
Speaker 1: busy I was trying to conceive of what would how
Speaker 1: I'd responded the moment. So while I was doing that,
Speaker 1: I was missing but the next part of the next
Speaker 1: thing that they were saying, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Dico also picked up on what led to my most
Speaker 1: embarrassing moment in the whole debate, the Walter Cronkite thing. II.
Speaker 1: Cronkite was, as I'm sure you know, the legendary CBS
Speaker 1: News anchor and wartime correspondent who for decades stood for
Speaker 1: all that was dignified and trustworthy in American journalism. Matt
Speaker 1: Taibi brought him up in his opening statement. Once the
Speaker 1: commercial strategy of the news business was to go for
Speaker 1: the whole audience. A TV news broadcast was aired at
Speaker 1: dinner time, and it was designed to be watched by
Speaker 1: the entire family, everyone from your crazy right wing uncle
Speaker 1: to the sulking lefty teenager in the corner. This system
Speaker 1: had flaws, but making an effort to talk to everybody
Speaker 1: had benefits for one thing, and inspire trust. Gallup polls
Speaker 1: twice twice showed Walter Cronkite to be the most trusted
Speaker 1: person in all of America. That would never happen with
Speaker 1: a newsreader today. With the arrival of the Internet, some
Speaker 1: outlets found that instead of going after the whole audience,
Speaker 1: it made more financial sense to pick one demographic and
Speaker 1: try to dominate it. How do you do that? That's easy.
Speaker 1: You just pick an audience and feed it news, you know,
Speaker 1: the like. Instead of starting with a story and following
Speaker 1: the facts, you start with what pleases your audience and
Speaker 1: work backward to the story. Back when we had Cronkite,
Speaker 1: this system worked. I heard that, and I thought, give
Speaker 1: me an effing break. So when it was my turn,
Speaker 1: I responded, I was greatly amused by the affection Matt
Speaker 1: Tabby has for the age of Walter Cronkite, which he
Speaker 1: seemed to hold up as a kind of golden moment.
Speaker 1: In that moment, the mainstream media was populated entirely by
Speaker 1: white men from elite schools. Why you would have had
Speaker 1: such affection and say that's the gold standard and we
Speaker 1: should trust the mainstream media precisely at the moment when
Speaker 1: the mainstream media is least representative, is really puzzling the meat.
Speaker 1: Then Dablas Murray chimed in, of course, Malcolm, you did
Speaker 1: a little nasty jab there by trying to pretend that
Speaker 1: Matt Tebe is desperate for the era of white men
Speaker 1: in broadcasting. Takes a certain hutsper to make that claim.
Speaker 1: Tabe then defended himself, and yes, as I said when
Speaker 1: in my speech, the old system under Walter Cronkite had
Speaker 1: its flaws, but it did have its advantages as well,
Speaker 1: making the effort to talk to everybody garner more trust
Speaker 1: in the public. There was a reason why people trusted
Speaker 1: newspeople more twenty or thirty or forty years ago than
Speaker 1: they do now. And once again I got irritated, this
Speaker 1: time with that phrase making the effort to talk to everyone. Um,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to do make a short list of
Speaker 1: the people who were not spoken to by journalists in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and sixties. And you may want to
Speaker 1: add some if I miss some black people, women, poor people,
Speaker 1: gay people, people with mildly left wing views. I mean
Speaker 1: words found me when somebody in when it presented with
Speaker 1: a critique of his rather at aosyncratic position on Walter
Speaker 1: Cronkite comes back and says, oh no, no no, no, there's
Speaker 1: more or to my great love of this man. So
Speaker 1: I'm on my high horse waving my work flag, standing
Speaker 1: up for inclusion. But wait first, back to less than one.
Speaker 1: Don't be myself. It's not smart, but that's not even
Speaker 1: the worst of it. Do you remember the context in
Speaker 1: which Matt brought that comment up in his opening? It
Speaker 1: was he was knee talking about how that was an
Speaker 1: example the way it was back then was worthy of
Speaker 1: our trust, and it's not like that anymore. Do you
Speaker 1: remember why what he was saying in His opening was
Speaker 1: not I am lifting up the nineteen fifties as the
Speaker 1: golden standard of media and Walter praglahblah. Yes, that's an
Speaker 1: intent came out of his mouth, but that's not what
Speaker 1: he was saying. What he was saying was look to
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, look to the past. When you had
Speaker 1: a whole family gathered around the TVs watching one show,
Speaker 1: that show had to talk to all of the people
Speaker 1: in that room, to the parents, to the to the grandparents,
Speaker 1: even if they had different interests, different political ideologies, whatever.
Speaker 1: That one show had to talk to a diverse audience.
Speaker 1: It could not have an agenda in the same way
Speaker 1: that it does today, because today it's not talking to
Speaker 1: a whole family. It's not even talking to a whole
Speaker 1: neighborhood or a whole household. We all have our individual
Speaker 1: echo chambers that we lean really hard into. Right, what
Speaker 1: he brought up about Walter Cronkite and about the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties was just a detail. Oh, I see. Deco's point
Speaker 1: was that the people in the audience, the judges surely
Speaker 1: understood what Taibi was saying, but I didn't. The main
Speaker 1: point there was totally ignored and it was a really
Speaker 1: important point for the A offense because their whole argument
Speaker 1: was you can't trust mainstream media because there are agendas,
Speaker 1: because they're not trying to give you the truth. They're
Speaker 1: trying to give you the spin and the story and
Speaker 1: cater to a They called it demographic hunting. I think
Speaker 1: right that they're catering to a specific demographic. The cronkite
Speaker 1: bit was a provocation waved in front of Malcolm Gladwell
Speaker 1: that sent him charging off in the wrong direction. It
Speaker 1: was like a distractor Thorne in there that worked, and
Speaker 1: you got totally distracted and went down this whole rabbit
Speaker 1: hole and missed that bigger picture. Where did I do anything? Well, no,
Speaker 1: not really remember what Douglas Murray said. It's so strange
Speaker 1: hearing you debate Malcolm, because you listen to nothing that
Speaker 1: your opponents say. It turns out he was right. And
Speaker 1: that was when Deco told me I had to come
Speaker 1: to Brooklyn again for listening lessons. I met with the
Speaker 1: Debate League at Unity Prep, a charter high school in Williamsburg.
Speaker 1: I sat myself down in a high school classroom for
Speaker 1: the first time since the late nineteen seventies, Dica, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: and Sissan were all there, along with a dozen or
Speaker 1: so high school debaters. There was a step class in
Speaker 1: the adjoining room. I was a long way from Roy
Speaker 1: Thompson Hall. All right, open form, look up. Being able
Speaker 1: to listen is the most important skill a debater should have.
Speaker 1: All right, stand up, You know the routine. If you agree,
Speaker 1: you on this side. If you disagree, you on that side.
Speaker 1: Come on, come on, Jonathan, kick things off with a
Speaker 1: warm up exercise. Open for him a mini debate on
Speaker 1: the question of the day. What's more important to a
Speaker 1: debater being a good listener or a good talker? Agree
Speaker 1: is always over here, Disagree always over here. Being able
Speaker 1: to listen, I'm so sorry. Being able to listen is
Speaker 1: the most important skill of debata could have. Being able
Speaker 1: to listen is the most important skill of debata is
Speaker 1: one of the most important skills and debating because the
Speaker 1: way the way people read read their contentions, and that
Speaker 1: supports you want to be able to gain and obtaining
Speaker 1: as much information as you can to put down on
Speaker 1: your vote chart. Because debating is not only about using
Speaker 1: information against information, but it's also about obtaining. It's about
Speaker 1: also about obtaining something and understanding that in order to
Speaker 1: use information snifier. Why I do I do agree with
Speaker 1: what you said. I just feel like you can be
Speaker 1: a good listener, But what it really takes is when
Speaker 1: you have confidence and you basically pretend like you know
Speaker 1: your stuff. But you also said you have to listen
Speaker 1: to your opponent. So that's also a very important skill
Speaker 1: to listen to your opponent, because if you don't listen
Speaker 1: to it and you just drawing stuff down, you might
Speaker 1: say the wrong things or right down the wrong things
Speaker 1: to what your opponent is saying. So I'm saying that
Speaker 1: listener is more important because as my other teammates said Jay,
Speaker 1: she also referred to how they read their contentions or
Speaker 1: their subpoints. They read fast, and if you can't catch
Speaker 1: those points, then you're not gonna know what you gotta
Speaker 1: write or what you gotta focus on. Can I say
Speaker 1: something real cool? Yes, I got all your output. Another
Speaker 1: old accurate LJA. To start with what you said you
Speaker 1: need to write in order to you need to write
Speaker 1: in order to listen. But it is true that that
Speaker 1: is true, but you but listening is a prerequisite to
Speaker 1: writing because you can write a whole bunch of nonsense
Speaker 1: But what if you don't have to write accurate information
Speaker 1: you didn't listen to the right numbers, you to listen
Speaker 1: to the racististics, Then what is your writing have to
Speaker 1: do with anything? I can They endrew up a very
Speaker 1: but that's not gonna make my argument any better unless
Speaker 1: you listened. Then the hard part began. What is this thing?
Speaker 1: This wasn't Sam was standing at the front of the room.
Speaker 1: He told us he would simulate a debate. Our job
Speaker 1: was to keep track of every argument he made in
Speaker 1: the debate world. This is called flowing, Susan said. He
Speaker 1: would try and make it easier on us. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna do a game who's playing cards? Where I am
Speaker 1: going to say the name of a card in a
Speaker 1: deck of cards, and you are going to flow it
Speaker 1: like it's a speech. So you're gonna make a column.
Speaker 1: So if you have a sheet of paper and we
Speaker 1: have notebooks for you, you're gonna want five columns. And
Speaker 1: in this first column top to bottom, you are going
Speaker 1: to write the cards that I'm going to say out loud.
Speaker 1: You're gonna want to listen carefully because I'm not going
Speaker 1: to repeat anything. The test is to see whether you're
Speaker 1: going to be able to write it all down without
Speaker 1: missing anything. Now, if you think this sounds like a
Speaker 1: silly exercise, I encourage you to pause this podcast, get
Speaker 1: a pen and paper and try it for yourself. Ready. Hello,
Speaker 1: my name is Sisan and I'll be speaking on the
Speaker 1: affirmative today. My first argument is the three of hearts,
Speaker 1: and we know that's true because of the four of diamonds.
Speaker 1: You can't forget about the Jack of spades. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people tell me ten of diamonds, but
Speaker 1: what those people don't realize is, first off, ace of hearts,
Speaker 1: secondly the six of clubs, and finally the nine of spades.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's the speech. So you should have these
Speaker 1: written down. Okay, great, now we're going to do the
Speaker 1: negative speech. Switch bank color. All right, I'm the negative
Speaker 1: and I disagree with everything that guy said. He says
Speaker 1: three of hearts more like the seven of diamonds. You know,
Speaker 1: people like to talk about Jack of spades, but what
Speaker 1: they don't realize is king of hearts. Ten of diamonds
Speaker 1: is okay if you don't remember that, the ace of
Speaker 1: spades is there. And as far as the Ace of
Speaker 1: hearts goes, more like the two of hearts. Finally they
Speaker 1: brought up the nine of spades, nine of spades, nine
Speaker 1: of seriously, because have you never heard of the Queen
Speaker 1: of clubs? That's my whole speech, and I'm maybe unnecessarily
Speaker 1: aggressive here. How did I do? I was terrible. I
Speaker 1: could keep up for the first minute or so. Then
Speaker 1: I fell behind. I miss things. The sun gets up
Speaker 1: and talks about playing cards, and I can't keep up.
Speaker 1: Is this heart? Oh yeah, I have a question for you.
Speaker 1: Is this Heart's really hard? This is really hard? And
Speaker 1: you guys are doing amazing. I see it all over
Speaker 1: your face. This is frustrating. You don't supposed to be
Speaker 1: an expert. I don't even know what he said half
Speaker 1: the tom, and I'm doing this Tom all right. This
Speaker 1: is what happened to me join the Monk debate. I
Speaker 1: was taking notes, but I didn't know how to take notes,
Speaker 1: So when Murray twisted the terms of the debate, I
Speaker 1: just missed it. And when Taibi made that reference to
Speaker 1: Walter Cronkite, I heard the name Cronkite, but I missed
Speaker 1: the context. Am I making excuses for myself? Of course
Speaker 1: I am. But what debate tells us is that the
Speaker 1: failure to listen is not a failure of will or
Speaker 1: motivation or character. That's what we assume when there's some
Speaker 1: breakdown in communication. If someone doesn't listen, we assume they
Speaker 1: don't want to listen. We hear the yelling and screaming
Speaker 1: on the internet, and we see it as evidence of
Speaker 1: some great flaw in our society. But maybe at least
Speaker 1: some of the time, the person who doesn't listen acts
Speaker 1: that way because they don't know how to listen. They
Speaker 1: haven't practiced, they don't know where to start. Listening is
Speaker 1: a skill like playing the piano or learning to cook.
Speaker 1: I asked Susan how long would it take me to
Speaker 1: listen the way he does to learn how to flow?
Speaker 1: I think, if you really focus on it, a school year,
Speaker 1: I think to be really comfortable where they probably like
Speaker 1: two school years. Yeah. Yeah, And that's half of your
Speaker 1: college competitive career. That's half of your high school competitive career.
Speaker 1: A long time. But imagine if we did it, if
Speaker 1: we all went to debate school, learn those lessons we're
Speaker 1: able to say to ourselves in the middle of a
Speaker 1: heated argument, this isn't about me. Learned how to avoid
Speaker 1: Walter cronkite sized rabbit holes understood that debating is not
Speaker 1: the art of talking, it's the art of listening. Oh
Speaker 1: and maybe the most important lesson of all. Do you
Speaker 1: know what they teach you to do at the Brooklyn
Speaker 1: Debate League After the debate is over, after one side
Speaker 1: has lost and the other has won, All right, you
Speaker 1: guys go to culture telling each other compliment, why we
Speaker 1: love each other? Compliment shout, shout out, and all around
Speaker 1: the room the debaters shouted out happily to each ob.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of how do you just look
Speaker 1: to that as because in that one where believed is
Speaker 1: like a really strong words to use, which gave you
Speaker 1: such believe with it of our arguments. And I love
Speaker 1: how you be coming in like you know what your
Speaker 1: what's your presence? Like you're gonna clear you know. So
Speaker 1: then it amps me up, Like when you have like
Speaker 1: that attitude, it amps me up and it makes me
Speaker 1: want to clear too. So I like that you, Matt
Speaker 1: and Doug, my monk debate antagonists. I appreciate you for
Speaker 1: forcing me to take what was spoiled and give it
Speaker 1: new life. Now one last questions, So I I approached
Speaker 1: you with this because, as I said, I had this
Speaker 1: disastrous experience with the Monk debate, and I so I
Speaker 1: wanted to use this opportunity to learn to be a
Speaker 1: better debater. Do you think this is typical of me?
Speaker 1: That I would am I a take spoil make style
Speaker 1: kind of person. In your mind? You are such a
Speaker 1: highly successful person that one would not associate with you
Speaker 1: many occasions in which you needed to do that. That's
Speaker 1: just a much. The fact that you I beg your pardon,
Speaker 1: I said, that's just a mother speaking you. You will
Speaker 1: not admit to any frailty on the part of your sons. No, No,
Speaker 1: not only that I'm not aware of that, but so
Speaker 1: off much. But the fact that you have risen about
Speaker 1: in this this remarkable way, um justifies my faith in
Speaker 1: you and my confidence in you. Ah, That's what I
Speaker 1: meant by maternal reassurance. Revision, says Street is produced by
Speaker 1: ben Ada Haafrey, Leaving Gistu, Kiara Powell, and Jacob Smith.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Kisha Williams and tali Emlyn. We are
Speaker 1: edited by Julia Barton and Peter Clowney. Original scoring by
Speaker 1: Luis Gara, mastering by Sarah Brugere and Engineering by Nina Lawrence,
Speaker 1: Twitter Taunting by Nina Lawrence, Leman Gistu, Justin Richmond, Ben Holliday,
Speaker 1: Emily Vaughan, and David jaw Special thanks to the Unity
Speaker 1: Preparatory Charter School and Brooklyn Debate League. If you're curious
Speaker 1: about the league and the fantastic coaches behind it. Keep
Speaker 1: an eye out for Jonathan Conyers's forthcoming memoir I Wasn't
Speaker 1: supposed to be here out this September. Jonathan has incredible
Speaker 1: stories to tell, most of all, special thanks to my mom, Joiceclappo.
Speaker 1: I'm Hersil