 This is Mises Weekends with your host Jeff Deist. This week's episode features a talk Jeff gave at a Mises event in Lake Jackson, Texas. The event was all about alternative media, and Jeff explains how the news tells a story or produces a show instead of reporting the truth. Stay tuned for his talk. Hey, well thank you so much ladies and gentlemen. It's great to see so many of you on a bright, beautiful Saturday morning here in the fall in Lake Jackson, Ron and Carol's hometown since the late 1960s when they decided they wanted to get out of Snowy Pittsburgh and that you could deliver babies in Texas just as well as you could deliver them anywhere else. So I know you are all excited this week about voting in the most important election of our lifetime. Woohoo! You know, I told Paul and my wife this morning, I said, you know, maybe if I make it to 80 or 90, I'll be looking at whatever kind of device we have for consuming news when I'm 80 or 90. And there'll be someone on there saying, well the election tomorrow is only of moderate importance, not that important, vote if you want, vote if you don't. But you might ask yourselves, a lot of you are obviously familiar with the Mises Institute. Why is the Mises Institute, which is largely dedicated to talking about economics of a certain variety and also about liberty and libertarianism? Generally, why are we having a conference on media? I think the short answer to that question is that I don't think liberty or economic science could advance without truth. I think the answer to that question is truth. How we consume information is in very large parts shaped by the media and oftentimes the media's friends in politics and academia. So without truth, we don't really have a starting point for any kind of real knowledge or understanding or learning in society. So I think it's a very important subject and I think it's a subject that touches all other subjects because as we'll see today, there's a narrative that's being pushed. So we're talking about media, but first I'd like to mention or begin with the traditional media. And when we say traditional media, we mean legacy outlets, cable news networks, print newspapers, print magazines, et cetera that have been around a long time and that find themselves struggling in this new environment. And what they really provide for us is a show. And I think there's a fundamental difference between producing a show and reporting news. Those are two very different things, but sometimes the difference is subtle. And we all get a sense when we watch, especially the cable networks, that it's a show. We have sort of an innate sense of that, but at the Mises Institute, we have a great friend who shall be named nameless and he works for one of the legacy media outlets. I won't mention it by name, but I'll just say it doesn't have an acronym and it's named after a little furry woodland creature. Three letters. So he works at this legacy media outlet and he says, whatever you think of the cable shows, he said it is ten times worse than you imagine behind the scenes. Because the lack of intelligence amongst the presenters, the narrative storylines being pushed upon them, the petty backstabbing, the egos, the intrigue, the extramarital affairs going on behind the scenes, the constant turnover. He said, whatever you think of cable news, he says, you have no idea what it's really like and I'm going to tend to believe him. So again, there's a difference between telling a story, between crafting a story or a narrative and reporting news. That doesn't mean that what we watch or consume in the traditional media is made up. It doesn't mean that it's conspiratorial. It doesn't mean that they don't actually report on organic or spontaneous events. Lots of these things happen in politics, in weather, in science, et cetera. And these are real things. So I'm not implying that. But sometimes you look at something and it's very difficult to tell exactly what the narrative is. And I think this migrant caravan story is just bizarre on so many levels. And whatever is happening, I know that what it is is different from what I'm being told. That's the only thing I know for sure, whether this whole caravan is a manufactured political stunt, I do not know. But they're steering us. They're not just informing us. And beyond that, it's not just how they present the stories. It's whether they present them at all. Their editorial choice and what to report or not report at all, or at least what to emphasize and what to downplay is a very, very, very important and powerful feature in American life today. And because they have a show rather than news, because they're giving us a show, well, that's the reason why a lot of things happen. It's the reason why when Deborah Medina put the fear of God and Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchinson in 2010 that they didn't know how to process that and that they did not understand those polling results because that wasn't part of the story that they had for us. And when someone like Iran Unz on his amazing website runs for office or introduces some referendums in the state of California that the public really liked but are not part of the story, it confuses them and they don't know how to report on it. It's the same reason why you don't see a Daniel McAdams talking about Yemen or Putin on CNN tonight. It's the reason why you don't see Scott Horton who literally wrote the book on our 17-year endless war in Afghanistan who literally wrote the book. Scott Horton knows more about what's going on in Afghanistan than a lot of the Pentagon DC generals themselves know about the war in Afghanistan. And there's a reason why Scott Horton is not on CNN at night talking about this but rather there's some hack from what we call the Assella corridor if you're familiar with this term. That's the train, the Assella train that runs between Washington and New York City. I guess it goes to Boston. We'll allow Boston. But basically you've got to live in Washington or New York City or somewhere in between to be on these cable news programs and part of that is of course because it's cheap to get local the same old, same old Assella corridor guests every night don't require travel expenses. But in the age of Skype and video conference that's not really an excuse anymore. There's no excuse for CNN not to have Scott Horton on talking about Afghanistan. So the Scott Hortons and the Ron Unses and the Ron Pauls and the Lou Rock was they're not part of the cast. They're not part of the story and they're not granted a cameo appearance in the story. So when you get these sort of unintentional cameos where something makes news that they didn't want, they have a hard time dealing with it. I read this great article the other day on a tiny, tiny website, Alternative Media. That's where I seem to get more and more of my insights these days. And the article was I wish I'd come up with this. I don't know if any of you had heard this term, but I can't claim it. It was called Fiat Media. So I thought that was a great term. The idea that we just sort of issue media stories. And so the author of this article, I think he was writing under a pseudonym because it was kind of a jokie name. He's talking about tells. For any of you who play poker, there's this concept of tells, something that a particular player will do, some tick or physical nervous habit that will give you a sense of what their hand is in poker. So he said there's tells when you're consuming traditional or legacy media. And he gave a bunch of terms. Let me read some of these. Whenever an Anderson Cooper, let's say on CNN, uses the term because or bad or therefore or however or nonetheless or as a result. So watch for these terms because these are the kind of terms that legacy media people use when they're trying to turn a reporting of news into telling of a story. They give their sort of where for to. And I thought that was really interesting, the idea of Fiat Media, Fiat News. So what Fiat News has given us, let's say over the last, I don't know, 30 years. Let's just say since the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Well they've given us a story and the story has been roughly the same regardless of what mainstream source you consume. It's been some sort of down the middle path between either the two dominant sort of sociopolitical narratives of our time, which are neoliberalism and neoconservatism. And both of those were based on this kind of dopey idea that there was an end to history and that everything was going to be okay now. And we weren't going to have these upheavals anymore because experts were in charge. And so neoliberalism and neoconservatism have come to resemble one another more than they appear dissimilar. Both of them believe in some sort of regulated capitalism and they both promote social democracy basically as the political mechanism for organizing society. They both talk a lot about universalism and globalism. This is a key part of the story. They both talk a lot about Western hegemony, particularly American influence around the world as the sort of the number one driver of how the world would be ordered. And if you notice that they never couched this in terms of imperialism or neocolonialism. Back when we sent people to Africa to exploit diamonds or oil, that was bad. But if we send them to Africa now to tell them how to order their country, that's benign because we know best. And they don't see the hubris in this. Of course the narrative always involves interventionism, nation building. And it's not just politics, it's economics as well. We've been fed a narrative, a narrative that I'm happy, well I'm not happy about it, but I will report with severely challenged by the economic crisis of 2007 and 2008 that sent some serious tremors throughout the world. But the economic narrative as well, basically we've entered an age of prosperity in the West and central banking is going to control money and it's going to control it just fine. And that central bankers are going to be these sort of technocratic people who can, you can use interest rates magically as a policy tool. Interest rates have nothing to do with how much people save and borrow, they're just a policy tool and we can use them in a way that doesn't actually require people to work harder or be more productive in society. We can just sort of create wealth through the wizardry, the alchemy of central banking, a key part of the story. And of course a big part of the economic or financial story has been, well, just like we have this kind of mishmash between neoliberalism, neol conservatism, we're going to have this kind of post-Keynesian economics where you don't really need to understand it but the main thrust of it is that the role of government, the role of fiscal and monetary policy is to create demand, to stimulate us all, to go buy stuff. And that's how you run a society of, excuse me, that's how you run an economy. You stimulate demand, you create demand. It has nothing to do with producing and saving and accumulating capital and investments. Just about producing demand. And I think that this story has done tremendous injury to all of us. And I think if we don't oppose this story it's going to do tremendous damage and injury to our kids and our grandkids. And it worries me quite a bit. And of course it's all born out of hubris. I think if there's one word to describe our legacy media it is hubris. And of course there's this idea that the First Amendment grants some special status or privilege to institutional media. It does no such thing. The First Amendment is very clear on its face. It just applies to Congress not passing laws about stuff. It doesn't mean that CNN or MSNBC or something deserves special access to the Trump administration or anybody else. It, as a matter of fact, the pamphleteers of colonial times were very, oftentimes very anti-state. They oftentimes were very harsh and acerbic. They were the bloggers of their day. And so a blogger today in his or her house just cranking out their own opinions has every bit as much a right to go ask Donald Trump a question as Wolf Blitzer does. And let's not forget that legacy media are private for-profit businesses. And the big networks are all owned by just a handful of people. This isn't some sort of benign public interest industry. These are for-profit companies. They have commercials. They have ads. They don't deserve any more special status in society than any other for-profit, than your local dry cleaner or your local McDonald's or hamburger chain. These are for-profit businesses. They don't deserve for us to view them as having some glorified or noble role as presenting the facts to us so that we can go vote for Congressperson X, Y, or Z on Tuesday. It really is a sham. And I think we've seen, especially since a couple of more recent shocks than the 2008 crash, the victory of the Leave Forces and the Brexit vote in the UK was a real shock to the European project. And of course, the election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton was a real shock to the US project. So I think these things have caused the media to really get their backs up. And I think they're really feeling it. And our friend, who works for the Furry Creature Network, one thing he'd said to me, all right, it's Judge Napolitano. And I'm not implying I'm super close to him. Occasionally talk or email with him. He's on our board. He said they really hate the term fake news. It really bothers them on a visceral level, because they have been the kings for so long. When Walter Cronkite, a lot of you don't know that name. You've got to be over 40, I guess. When Walter Cronkite went on the news, that was the news. And he told you what he was going to tell you between 720 and 735 about Vietnam or whatever it was. And then Tom Brokaw and whoever. But it's not like that anymore. And it bothers them quite a bit. I can tell you that. So the question for us is, what are the alternatives? Alternative media, because that's the only media you and I have. That's really the only media that's available to us. And the amount of money involved in the legacy media is so staggering. I saw that Megan Kelly, who used to be. She was at Fox, I believe. And then she went to MSNBC. I guess based on Halloween, somehow people were talking about proper costumes. And someone brought up the topic Blackface. And apparently she said something untowards about this. And she's being nixed from MSNBC. And I saw that she and her lawyers are aggressively going after something $36 some million under her contract to go away. I mean, think of the money they're spending on studios and personnel and payroll. And then think that some blogger can come along and touch and reach all of us. That bothers them a lot. So it's so important that we're all involved, I think, in alternative media in some sorts, even if we're just consuming it, rather than consuming the mainstream media. And by alternative media today, we can speak very broadly. We can speak of a site like Mises.org, which we're not as big as the big financial sites, like a Forbes or a RealKermark. It's been in the pure econ site, excuse me, the pure econ segment. We're one of the largest sites in the world in terms of traffic. Sites like Ron Unza's site, sites like lurockwell.com, like Danny McAdams site at RPI. I mean, these are the mechanisms by which we have to consume our news. And a personal favorite of mine, which you should never read before bed is zero hedge. It's better in the morning with that coffee, when you need to get juiced up a little bit. And there's a blogger that many of you may be familiar with. She appeared digitally at the Ron Paul conference earlier this year, named Caitlyn Johnson. And she's an Australian blogger who really just came out of nowhere. She had written some other kinds of books, some children's books. And she's become a very powerful anti-war blogger. And she wrote a very interesting story about the narrative, that whether we like it or not, we're all fighting every day to grab ahold of this narrative or to at least nudge it a little bit. And as much as I don't like that, I don't like a politicized America. I don't like the idea that we all have to be so political, because I think so many smart people are out busy in business doing creative things, and they're not doing this. So we end up with a lot of dummies in academia and media. So it concerns me, but the bottom line is, as they say about politics, the same is true about the story, that whether the narrative is interested in us, whether we're interested in it or not. So it's a trying time in America, but the digital revolution came along, and it made our ability to communicate with each other so cheap, almost free. And it's something that we all have to seize. And I think some of our speakers today are going to be good examples of people who have done just that. So thank you very much. Subscribe to Mises Weekends via iTunes U, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, or listen on mises.org and YouTube.