 Thanks for joining us at Think Tech, Hawaii for another difficult conversation to make good trouble. And we have with us today, Professor Vinnie Liorando, Professor Emerita from University of Dayton School of Law, and a leading expert for decade on race and the law and racism, with a website with a lot of materials for any of those interested in the subject racism.org Tina Patterson in Germantown, Maryland, not New Jersey, we're not giving Chris Christie any more jurisdiction or dominion than he already has. Mediator, arbitrator, consultant, business advisor, Jeff Portnoy, who's right now in Big Sky, at the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, leading senior Hawaii First Amendment and constitutional attorney, partner at Cage Shuddy, and Ben Davis, Professor Emeritus from University of Toledo School of Law. And now visiting professor at Washington Lee School of Law and former chair of the American Bar Association section of dispute resolution. Welcome everyone. So one of the questions that was raised late in one of our recent sessions was, what's the responsibility of the media to public health, safety, and information? And how does it measure up in these times? Any thoughts on that? Jeff, you're our media expert. Can you repeat the question again one more time? I didn't hear it. Okay, so the question is, what's the responsibility of the media in these times for public health, safety, and truth, and information? And how are they measuring up? Well, I think it depends on your definition of truth. That's a major problem, isn't it? We apparently have 50% of the country believing one truth and 50% of the country believing another truth. But it's a very difficult question as to what the responsibility of the media is because the next question is, who's the media? So, I think with 160 cable channels and God knows how many internet sites, people will have an opportunity to survey the truth and determine what they believe the truth is. And clearly we know that television viewing is divided up between the left of MSNBC and the right on Fox and Newsmax and CNN sometimes in the middle. So, I think the media is doing the best job it can under very trying times. I think the major problem is social media and not the traditional journalists. Professor Randall, your thoughts? Well, I think that, first of all, I think all of the media, traditional and social media are problematic. And particularly traditional media, because they tend to present information as if it's objective without, they decided that it's objective without values and that is pretty problematic. But my concern is I wish people was doing research and getting both sides, but as a person who finds myself constantly in groups that conflict with other groups that I'm in. So I'm in the black nationalist group and the feminist group and the Christian group. And what I find is because of my work on race and racism, I tend to look at a lot of different things from a lot of different sides. And, but what I find is, is people in those groups are not doing research. They're not doing study and looking at alternative point of views and they're tending to get their information, not from media, not from, they're tending to get their information from other people who believe like them. And that's who they trust the most. And that information is often incorrect or biased. So if people would, verify information and before they pass it on, whether from traditional media or not, that would be wonderful, but that's not happening. Dana, your thoughts? I agree with Jeff. So it's a two-parter as far as my answer. As far as responsibility, and I'm gonna talk about the role or ideally when it comes to public health and safety, public information is the most important. It's vital and distributing that information as many channels as possible. The challenges, and I think this is why this question is arising, is what is a, do we have reliable outlets, whether that's printed media, social media, or otherwise, where we can literally tell someone, this is the information that needs to be distributed and please distribute it far and wide. Instead, we get filtered or refiltered or attributions added that in some instances, it's helpful, but in many instances, it's harmful. And in some instances, it causes lives to be lost. And so I think that's where this question is coming from. I know when I underwent emergency response training, one of the chief vehicles we looked for was who to reach out to, to get the information to the wider public, whether it was a public, a natural disaster, or if there was an incident, and when I say incident, it could be an active shooter or another event that took place where you wanted people to know, here's what the status is. And this is where having trusted channels that you can literally distribute that information is critical. The truth part of it, I think is, again, is going to be in the eye or the eyes of the recipients, what's true. But so that's why I say it's a two-parter. One is relying on the channels we have to. And two, trusting that they're going to do what they've been entrusted to do and when they're not finding an alternative means. And also hoping that the recipient hopefully has enough, has the ability to hear, critically think and analyze what they're hearing and say, you know, that just doesn't make sense. Why should I drink Clorox to make me feel better when there's a sign on the back of it that says it's poison? Okay, Ben, your turn. So first thing is that all the media are out to make money, all right? So they have to get market share or whatever, eyes, whatever the thing is to get the advertising. So that's what's driving the business side of what they're trying to do. And obviously that reality can be complicated when it has to deal with issues like truth. I would say that the classic case we've just seen is this case of the 10 year old girl who was raped in Ohio and had to go over to Indiana to have the abortion. So that was the story of truth. And what first happened in certain media elements was to simply deny it was true, all right? And then when it came out later, because it even up to the attorney general of the state of Ohio denying that it happened, right? I mean, literally that far up the line of terms of truth tellers you would expect. And then later on, of course, you find a guy gets arrested for, guess what, raping this 10 year old girl, right? That second story gets turned into a thing that he's a illegal immigrant. Not about the girl and the fact that of her tremendously horrific experience does not become the focus. That's deflection. So denial and deflection is a game that the media play with truth. In the same time, over in Indiana, what happens there? The attorney general Indiana wants to investigate the doctor who gave her the abortion, right? That makes a whole big thing about that. And so that becomes another kind of deflection, not focusing on the fact that post-dobs, this horrific situation happened for this 10 year old girl. Now I happened to read recently that there's the latest statistics from 2017 that said that there were 4,500 little girls that year who had abortions across America. So 4,500 little girls who were raped in 2017. That's the broader thing that's going on that we could think about right now. What about those half of those states where there's maybe 2,200 little girls going through this kind of horrific thing from incest or rape or whatever? That story you don't hear. That's the story that would be, I think the next level up to help. Now the anecdotal stories, the individual stories that I think are helpful to crystallize people, but it's a broader systemic problems that are caused that are kind of getting lost because it requires doing research and as Professor Randall knows, people don't like to do research to put that stuff out there. And the media, I think is really on the forefront of not wanting to do research. They tend to want to just interview people, take a few facts and said, he said, she said, without. Take that 10-year-old, the story about the 10-year-old girl and the governor. One of the disinformations that was put out there was that she could have gotten an abortion in Ohio. On a technically level, the way I read the deal, that was true as a medical necessity was included. But no one talked about how she could have gotten it in Ohio, what a medical necessity would be, whether or not that had been defined. And if she tried to go to court, if she tried to get an abortion in Ohio, she certainly would have been blocked by a temporary motion to stop the abortion while they define medically necessary. And meanwhile, her pregnancy would continue. And in all cases, it's quite possible that they might decide that an abortion for a 10-year-old is not a medically necessary, unless there's some evidence of life threatening. And then she would have been pregnant with the eyes of the public on her, no way to get to Indiana and get an abortion because it might have been past their time. That's the full story. And what I have problem with the media is they don't tell that story. And then this represents the story in the headline. And so, and we know that a good portion of people only read the headline. And so, you know, it's misrepresented headline and it's not told in the body. And how can people be well-informed about public health issues if the organizations that are out there putting forth stories on public health are not giving a full representation of the situation, the facts, the medical information, whatever. It was very frustrating because there was snippets that were untrue or misrepresenting. I'm gonna have to stand up for the media here because the media is not responsible for people's reading and viewing habits. And I don't think that you can lump the media together anymore. In fact, I know you cannot because if you read the New York Times and you read the Washington Post, you have all that information that you guys are alleging is not available because it is. I read the Washington Post every day. Their stories are 2,000, 3,000 going to great detail. The problem is that half the country believes that the Washington Post and the New York Times are in the hands of the Democrats and the liberals so they discount anything that's in there. And I don't disagree with you that what huge percentage of people just looked at the headlines. But look, the media makes mistakes. I've been representing them for 50 years. I know they do and I'm using the term media but it just depends. I mean, we don't have small town papers anymore. We hardly have papers in major cities anymore but we have multiple outlets, the real problem. And I've just been sitting here at the Ninth Circuit and we've had programs on what's happened between free speech and social media. You really have to come down and make the decision and whether you're gonna allow all kinds of speech whether it's on the internet or some other form and then hope that people can discern what the truth is or not, but it's very difficult. And when you have 20% of the people are adamant that the election was stolen. 40% believe it's possibly that it was stolen. Two years after the election, what's the truth? We all know the truth. How many times do people have to be told that it wasn't? Or when you deal with COVID and the vaccine, you know that 15% of the people think that COVID was invented by Google and by Facebook and people like that. I mean, it's crazy. So the country's in turmoil about what it believes but I don't think you can blame quote the media. You can blame aspects, huh? No, no, you can blame the whole media. When you can quote who organizations out of thousands those two organizations are the exception, not the rule. And you can blame the whole media. People should not have to go to the Washington Post. People should not have to go to time to get accurate full information. And to say they do is to, it is the media. It's not, you can, a few exceptions doesn't change media, the fact that how we can characterize the whole media. Yeah. Jeff brings up a really good point which is the underlying confirmation bias, the selectivity in what people are even willing to consider and parrot and spout forth. Ben, you had some thoughts? Well, again, there is the confirmation bias, I agree. And part of that is related to the fact and it's one of the things that Jeff was pointing out is the disappearance of local newspaper, the reduction in the sizes of newsrooms and all that. So that the actual people to do the legwork that used to be there maybe 30, 40 years ago, they're not around. And that dictate just let's just have two faces on one side on the other side. And that's it kind of media that we're so used to these days. And it's one of the changing landscapes of media. I think that in addition to the social media thing that's going on, but I wanted to emphasize another aspect of this, which is that confirmation bias has been around a long time and snake oil salesmen have been around a long time selling all kinds of stuff, like on the COVID and all that. And back in the day it was those little snake oil bottles or something like that. So the problem is, they're marketing, right? They're trying to make money. They're trying to make money. That you got to understand. There's no regulation that is allowed on all these efforts that are really at the heart of it about making money. The big lies about making money, it's called the big rip off. All of that is about making money and getting some power. So that's just the way the American landscape is going. What I'm optimistic about though, and believe it or not, I am optimistic, is that this is the summer of rage right now. I went to a women's march thing on July night and that's what it was in time, the summer of rage. And one of the things they wanted, federal laws to address all of these potential Supreme Court decisions that are vulnerable on the substantive due processing. And I'm optimistic because in the house, they passed the codification of Roe. On the house, they passed the codification of Obergefell, Larn and Lubbock. They're working on a codification for Griswold. Now you say, well, that's just the house. Yeah, I know, but the thing that's great about it is that it puts people on the record as to which side they voted on. And if they vote against it, vote them out, okay? Then we get over to the Senate side. There's gonna be another game on the Senate. But that's all happening now. Not, we promise in the future after the election, if you give us what we want. These votes are happening right now. There's even an assault weapons ban thing that's going up apparently soon to go in now. Put people on the record now. They vote against what you want, vote them out. The other thing I would just add on the media is I have a fairly conservative congressman. He puts up on his official website quotes from the Bible. And I'm like, you know, man, if I needed to know about the Bible, I'll go see my priest or my pastor or my email, my rabbi or whatever. I don't really mean my member of Congress quoting Bible to me, right? I mean, there's supposed to be a role where your religious tests are not allowed under the Constitution. And I find that really bizarre that people think that that is okay. And I think it's normal for these quotes from the Bible to be put up every once in a while. So I didn't put up a quote myself, but beware of false prophets, okay? I can do that again. But, you know, it's that kind of... People of Congress having an article or something in a newspaper about what is this putting up quotes from the Bible. Well, Ben, I'm not as optimistic as you and people know that I'm very pessimistic. There's all kinds of bills that have passed the House of Representatives in the last two years and have gone nowhere. And unfortunately, looking at the polls, come November, the House will unpast all that legislation. And even if they didn't, and some miracle occurred, which it's not gonna happen, the Republicans are gonna control the House by 20 or 30 or even more. You know, Jeff, I've heard that story for the last year. These bills that you say... No, I've heard that story for the last year, but I'm just gonna say to you, we are in a post-Dogs environment. I'm gonna say, I have seen the summer rain. The polls have not shifted. I have seen the summer rain, brother. Ben, Ben, Ben, the polls haven't shifted if you look at a state-by-state basis. I hear you, if you take the national polls, which are controlled by populations on the East and the West Coast, all of the things that you and I want should have happened and will happen. Unfortunately, it's not done that way. Each state has two senators and 30 of the states are never gonna go the way you and I would like it to go. So post-Dogs, post everything else, not in the foreseeable future, I do not believe. All right, I'll make a prediction. Beto O'Rourke is gonna win Texas. You watch. I make a prediction, Ben, the strange for whatever this is, and it's from white women, because they ain't raging over racial things. This rage will peter out soon as they go back and settle down and figure out they got the money to get the abortion they want. And they will say, well, let's start up through the system. We need to work through the system. It's not that bad. And come December, this is my prediction. Come December, they'll be at home drinking at parties, supporting laws, voting on people, signing petitions, Ben's gonna be raging. The woke white woman argument I had to deal with when I was at that women's march thing on July 9th from a brother. This is just a bunch of woke white women, all right? And I said, hey, man, this is about black women too, because forced pregnancy went out with slavery. Absolutely about black women. And black women had been in the street for the last 500 years and they got no change on the street. The white women are the part of the equation that is needed. And they're gonna go back to their homes as soon as they figure out that they got the money to do what they want to do and say, let's the system work. And Ben, and Ben, by next June, when the Supreme Court rules on the North Carolina case and takes away any power of state supreme courts to control elections and leaves it completely in the hands of state legislatures, you'll have your ticket to Canada or wherever else you'd like to move to. You know, that's what I love about you all. You're so optimistic. You're in the middle of the battle and in the middle of the battle, all you're saying is we can't win, okay? So I'm gonna say to you, what is the common theme for black people in America in the last 500 years? It's been, we will fight at the end of the day, no matter what. We will fight. It's been, we've been dying on the side of the road all of the way because we've been killed all of the way. And if we count the bodies of the dead people, we will know, yeah, we keep marching but we don't get nothing until white people say they want to do it. Yep, and I'm gonna say to you, even with that, we know that and even with that, what do we do? We keep fighting because yeah, they can play all these games but Reverend Barber's out there and other people are out there working and people bringing lawsuits and people do whatever they need to do to make the change happen. So would you please leave your pessimism by the door and try to be a little more proactive? Hey, Chuck, this is a great conversation because for once no one's attacking old white men. Not yet. If you'd like me to attack old white men, I'm gonna tell you that one of the things that I have a problem with with all these state legislatures that are trying to set up these abortion limitations is these folks don't understand women and girls' health. Like this is Lady down in Louisiana, had a miscarriage. She, the best medical treatment would have been for her to have an abortion but because of the law, they weren't sure they could go that way so she had to have an induced delivery because they don't understand women's bodies. She had to carry around this dead baby inside her a week or two or something like that. I'm not adopting Professor Randall's the nurse but all I'm trying to say is that that seemed insane to me because the right of law that makes no damn sense for women and girls' health. There ain't about women and girls' health. Yeah, well, that's why I'm saying women and girls' health is the priority and you can't write a legislative act that won't leak dumb stuff happening to women and girls. Apparently you can't do it. You can't do it. They did. What do you mean they did? Yeah, but one that is medically sane. Okay, I'm talking health, medically sane. You can't write a law that is medically sane and that's them old white men, brother and a white women I would mention too in all those damn states. They've forgotten or they never knew. I mean, these guys have said, I can't believe a 10 year old could get pregnant. I said, oh man, what do you think puberty was about, man? All these little girls turning getting puberty 10, 11 years of age. All of a sudden they're in the box. They're running that risk. People said they didn't know that. Thanks, Larry. And we're out of time for today but I wanna finish off, Tina, you've been very patient. Any last words, notes of optimism, pessimism or where to go from here? I'm gonna go back, then Chuck, thank you. You started off asking about the media and I think my co-panelists have brought up a lot of good points about where the media is failing. I would pose this question for us to think about. We know the media is failing. How do we harness the failures to our advantage to get the word out about what's factual, what people really need to know and have them act accordingly? We see articles that say six minute read but we are really in a world where everything is a 30 second soundbite or 140 to 245 characters. How do we take advantage of that instead of, it's not working, we know it's not working but how do we leverage it so that it works to get the message out that we need people to hear? That's a great way to wrap us up for today. Thank you all. Professor Randall, Jeff, Ben, Tina. Thank you all for joining us. We'll be back in a couple of weeks. Thanks from Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.