 community matters. We're here with John Fink. And I'm going to talk about media because he's a retired TV executive, but he's also a super-duper media consultant person. And we did an OC16 show where he appeared at the Harvard Club, must be what, a year or a year and a half? Two years ago. Two years ago. It was just fabulous. And you can find that on OC16. It's there. Or you can find it on our website, TechOI.com. John sent me a resume. I know I've said this to you before. And the problem with it was I'm not going to tell you that I ran out of ink in my printer. But I will tell you that my eyesight's not that good. And I couldn't get through all the entries on it. Now he says it's not a resume. It's just a list of stuff I've done because I wanted to keep track for myself and I've never done a resume before. So I thought, well, if you want to know what I've done or do, here's what's going on. Well, I knew that you'd been in television and media for basically a lifetime. But I didn't know about all the community service you'd done. And that's really extraordinary. Thank you. I mean, you have an enormous number of these community service situations. And I thought I knew people who had a lot of community service. But you know, you know, with the bell, you hit the thing and you're right up there. Anyway, it's educational and it feeds into this whole sophistication thing about understanding the community, really understanding the roots of the community. And so my question to you is, is the media doing its job in Hawai'ine? Is the media educating people, making them good citizens, making them good voters? Encouraging them to vote, encouraging them to engage with government and each other to create, you know, the ideal democratic society? Well, the first thing I would remind you is oftentimes the media is the conduit. So all the media can do is present what we've got. So if you don't like the politicians we have, we can't we in media don't control that. All we can do is present them to you. And if you're disappointed, change who you vote for. Now, then you could say, well, we don't have great candidates sometimes. Absolutely. It's difficult to find quality candidates. And we do tend to recycle people, some of whom are very good and some of whom are maybe not so good. But I don't think the media does a good or a bad job on that end. I think the media just shows you here's what's out there. And frankly, over the last few years with more and more media sites putting more of these smaller races on there and more information, I think now as a consumer you have less excuse than ever before for going into a voting situation and being ignorant of what these people believe in, where you might go in and go, oh, I've heard of that guy before and vote for him. Now you should have at least a track record of what either they say they're going to do or they've done or their positions on things. So I think there is a better chance to have a more educated voter nowadays than possibly ever before. But the media calls the shots, doesn't it, in terms of what it presents. I mean, for example, I mean, I was on one of these media advisory council. I might have met at one of these. And my whole view and concern that remains today is, you know, weather supports or real accidents, crime, what did I miss? You know what? If I asked the general public, which is whom we catered to to a large degree, what are the things that matter most to you? You'd be amazed that even in this place that everybody always says, oh, come on, it's always sunny and 80 degrees, weather always comes up number two or number three. So why would you not appease your constituent base by giving them the information? And we obviously have micro climates here and it's different on the windward side than it is on the leeward side. And we're a very outdoor society. So I think there's an argument to be made that that is important for a lot of people. Now, is it as fundamental as homelessness or education? Of course not. But again, the media is not the ones that are responsible for those things. And yet they are responsible for making sure we're aware of them. And I think holding people accountable to make sure they deal with those things and try to make it better for everyone, which is I believe what politicians are supposed to be doing. Well, speaking of politicians, there are a number of politicians who want, including in Washington, we'll get to that, who want to be on the screen. They want to they want to be seen. They don't really care. My name, right? And they they they will do anything to get on the screen, including a lie. And you know, this is a big problem in this country right now. Yeah. And I and I I wonder if the media ever says, wait a minute, he's lying. I wonder if the media says we're not going to cover him because we know he is manipulating us. Yeah. Let me just let me just be clear. There is more media and more. There are more conduits, Jay, than there have ever been before. But do not think this crappy lying politician thing is a new phenomenon. I went back under the heading of fake news and found out that Ramses the Great spread lies about war victories in 1200 BC. A TV and ran a misinformation campaign about Mark Anthony and the list goes on and on. So I would just tell you that it was a little bit more difficult to get it out there before. But as long as people have their personal interests and are truly only interested, which many of them are in power and control, lying has gone on for a long time. The problem is the media and the way we are set up, certainly on news stations and stuff. We have 30 minute pukas to fill. And we are going to present what we get. I mean, there's a vetting process that goes on. But we're not the ones doing the talking for the most part. It's these are the people that you elected. These are the people. And if you believe what they're telling you, then hold them accountable. If you don't believe it, then kick them out because that's the way the system works. So right now, at the top of Montague, we have 100, maybe 200 people. I don't know how many there right now because presumably some of them were carted away already. And they're there, you know, they're there to be on the media. They're they're protesting to make a statement. And you know, my own conclusion is if the media, the cameras were not there, they wouldn't be there. Yeah, I don't agree. I think there are people who deeply, deeply believe in this. And I think it goes far beyond just this specific telescope. I think this is a pent up. You've been doing things like this to us, whether they're right or wrong. You've been doing this for years. You've you've taken this mountain and made it your own. And we've had enough because this is the biggest and the best. And it's just, you know, you've you've pushed us one time too many. So I don't know how many people it really is. You know, you read the surveys that say 75 to 78% of people agree with the TMT, including Hawaiians. I don't know where that number is actually up. But I do believe people sincerely think that they need a voice to be heard. And they're adamant that they just don't want to see this thing happen. True. However, we've been hearing it for, I want to say 10 or 15 years, right? And it went through incredible process. I mean, we bent over we meaning the whole state bent over backward every every opportunity we gave, right? And finally, it finished. It was finished as final as it could be. And then we had more programs. Right. So what you say is it's finished, but it's not finished in the minds of people who think it's not finished. And if you think it's finished and done, talk to me about Roe versus Wade and what's going on with abortion, because that was finished also. And talk to me about gerrymandering and equal rights for people and things like that. All these things are written, many of them as law. It does not means people's impressions or feelings change. And that's what you're dealing with now. It's like, it's really talking about the rule of law. Okay, from a protester, whether it's Roe v. Wade, whether it's TMT, what about the other side of the coin? What about the guys who would like to see things stay as they are? And they really have had enough protest. They feel that the side that is in the press has already made its point in court and lost, maybe. And now, we have the ordinary citizen who says, you know, I can't trust government. It turns around. It goes upside down. Every time you look, something I took for granted has been blocked on me. And therefore, in this democracy, I no longer can be confident. I no longer can feel that I am the government. And the government is me. I think you have to go back to the very, I mean, if we're going to talk about the rule of law, which is what you're basing this premise on, I think you have to go back to the fact that the Constitution has always been a living, breathing document. It is not written in black and white, even though it is, of course, written in black and white, but it's not in black and white. And it's been up for interpretation for 230 years, or we wouldn't have a Supreme Court. We wouldn't have reversals on things. We wouldn't have new things that come into play. Look, everybody talks about the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. I understand the context in which that was written. And I think even the people who don't want to agree with some of it understand the context. But before that amendment, there's one called the First Amendment, which was the right to free speech. Well, I got to tell you, on television, we can't do what they do in broadcast TV on HBO. We can't swear. We can't show nudity. We can't show graphic violence. So if there's free speech, why can't we do that? Oh, because we're licensed by the very same government that told us that we have the right to free speech. So we have all kinds of a mishmash of disconnect going on. But it goes back to this living, breathing document. And I think you have to look at that when you talk about these things that what appears to be black and white is never black and white. And anytime you have a civil society, and hopefully things stay civil with the TMT, you're going to have dissenters. And I won't go into the details, but there are a couple of issues locally, which have driven me crazy over the years. One of them is the Natatorium, which is supposed to be a wonderful reflection of the wonderful men and women from this state when it was a territory that fought in World War One. And it's an embarrassment. And every year it gets pushed down the road. And then you have the stairway to heaven, which is inviting someone to finally die before they say, close it or fix it. But we just continue to push these things down the road. And what I've tried to make clear when I've had the audience of anybody who's involved in making those decisions is look, nobody ever wins 10 to nothing. It's going to be six to four or seven to three. But you've got to do what the right thing is. And people will be upset, but you need to make decisions because by not making decisions on these things, you actually are making decisions. Well, let me ask you this. You know, the title of our show is how has the media changed? That means during your career? Right. And mine as an observer, I'm not not directly involved. Most of my time is not in the media. Right. And how is it changing now? Because I think it has changed dramatically. It has changed, perhaps not for the best. And right now it's you can't be too optimistic, actually. Well, the first thing I would tell you is as far as content goes. And at the end of the day, forget, doesn't matter if I get it on my phone, my iPad, you know, in a in an airport lobby, the content is king. And the he who he or she who creates the best content in the viewers minds, they win. Okay, so that's number one. Number two, it has changed quite a bit. I've been doing this over 40 years, but it has changed quite a bit in the fact that back in the day, you had ABC, CBS and NBC, you had a public's broadcast station, you might have an ethnic station and maybe an independent. That was your TV landscape. And then in the late 70s, early 80s, you started getting real energy coming out of the fledgling cable world with CNN and ESPN and TV s and TNT. And there were probably a dozen and NPR on radio. Absolutely. So you started getting some of that. Now, the average American consumer gets over 200 channels and watches 12. That's what the research says. So too much and is paying way too much. I absolutely agree. My analogy of what goes on in the world of cable and satellite as a broadcaster. If I went into a supermarket and got my shopping cart and as I started walking and someone threw a bunch of items in and I'd say, I don't want those items. And you'd say, oh, no, if you shop here, you have to buy those items. That's what you get with cable and with satellite. So there have been years and years of protest about a la carte selection and stuff. And the cry was, oh, no, if you do that, the smaller stations will go out of business. Well, I kind of thought that's what we call America. It's called people don't want it. If we don't want something in the capitalist society, it ceases to exist. It happens every week with restaurants and a lot of other things. We evolve to a better quality. So the one thing I would tell you is I think content is king. I think it's hard to aggregate content like we used to on three or four stations where all the good writers and actors were on the major network stations. They're all over the place now and frankly, they're going on to the internet and on to pay services because they have much more freedom and what they can say and what they can show and how they can deal with issues that you just can't do on broadcast TV makes it much tougher nowadays than it did 30 years ago for broadcast TV. At the end of the day, though, broadcast TV for the most part still aggregates the greatest number of viewers, especially for significant events, the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards, the Mary Monarch Festival. That's where the most people will be. And that's what the advertisers want is to reach as many people as possible with their message for broadcast TV is broadcast TV doing the job. For example, we talked about weather and sports and crime and accidents. That may be what people say they want. But what do people really need? Because their education usually stops in high school or college. And after that time, they're educated by broadcast TV. Are we sufficiently educating them? You know, sufficiently educating, you might end up with a situation like school where people don't go to class and don't care. And that may be the problem with trying to be the educators. Now, I will say, I think locally, and I'm going to put on my subjective hat, I think Hawaii News now has done a phenomenal job with issues like the police chief and the homeless situation and its coverage of what's going on with the TMT right now and trying to remain straddled in the middle to present the information to you and then you, the local viewer, the local citizen can decide which way you think things should go. I think it has done much better on the local level by local news sources than on the national level and especially the cable level. It is not news anymore. It's pandering to an audience to try to generate eyeballs for advertising. So it's a completely different thing. As long as you still have local stations that are accountable in their communities that have people who can get fired if they bring up fake news or false news and stuff, I think you can still say, if I need to know what's going on locally, I can still get it. And hopefully for the most part, I get it through local television, local radio, but doesn't, which doesn't have a lot of news people and local newspaper. And the big question in our world today now, Jay, is what happens as more and more small town newspapers, which was often the only source of news. They're not covered by the big TV stations in the major markets, but the Lihue newspaper, the Molokai Times or whatever you may call it in North Dakota and places like that when they go out of business, who's keeping an eye on government? Who's keeping an eye to make sure the people in power are doing what they're supposed to do on the benefit of the people? And the answer is no one. Why not social media? Why can't social media get right into that? Can you trust social media so far? Not so much. Yeah. Well, that's a question. Can we make social media a better media? Can you make it better? Yes. Can you can you cure it? No. No. Can you make social media a better medium? Absolutely. Should people spend less time on social media? Absolutely. Are we losing our ability to communicate as human beings? Absolutely. Go talk to any psychologist or psychiatrist. Used to be you and I would get done with a movie. When the movie ended, I would turn to you and say, Jay, what'd you think? What is everybody in a movie theater do now? They reach for their phone because God forbid it's been 90 to 120 minutes they haven't been able to communicate. And they might have missed the latest cats walking on the piano keys. Cats on the piano key. Well, you know, the problem is that social media is irresponsible. There's no way to take a sort of spurious, I want to say journalist, spurious news purveyors. Right. And make them responsible. I mean, if we could figure out how to do that, that would be helpful. I don't know if you can do it in a pure sense because then you would be denying free speech. So people wanting to lie and doing that through print or radio or TV that's been going on forever. People lie to each other every day. You can't stop that. So to suggest you can do that empirically and not be accused of playing big brother in social media is going to be very difficult. And I know Google and Facebook have AI, artificial intelligence and actual human beings who are looking through stuff to vet it. But how far do they go before someone calls them for going too far by saying, well, it's not all true, but some of it's true. So why are you taking that down? Is that because you don't like that position that you're being shown? So I think we have to be careful. And I would agree with you. There are people who don't necessarily want to know the truth. They want to know what makes them feel justified or national. Well, it happens everywhere. Well, I have a real problem with it on a national level. And I'll tell you what's feeding it is the 24 seven news service world and information world. Things are, you know, used to be Andy Warhol's famous line about everyone's going to be famous for 15 minutes. Now that's 15 seconds. Because yesterday's Twitter tweet is I don't even remember who you're talking about in it because that's how insignificant it is. When you're feeding the beast, the analogy I would use is you have a barbecue at your house, but you don't know how many people are going to show up or what they want. But you have to keep putting coal into it to keep the fires ready in case people come in. That's what happens with 24 seven news services. And local news has now got to take its reporters and hire additional digital only people because it's not just five, six, nine and 10 that we watch the news. I want to know when something's going on at two o'clock. And from a business standpoint, if you spend enough time on my website, you may not watch the five or six o'clock news. And now I've lost a potential viewer, which affects my ability to sell advertising. So my concern is where are we going to be in five or 10 years? I can assure you that the internet revenue as it is laid out now for media companies in no way comes close to equalizing what they used to or still get from their major baby, which is the day to day print paper and the day to day newscast. You know, an undercurrent of this is the economic. Yes, it's driven. I mean, the most responsible news organizations are driven by the economics and the economics aren't so good. I mean, you know, we've lost a number of number of newspapers, not only little ones and little towns, big ones in big towns, major towns used to have two or three newspapers have one. And so then you have to go to other places. And you know, I get my news from the Times, the Post and the Guardian. I mean, and others, but those are three. And I'm saying to myself, it's kind of a consolidation of information is where else do I go? And where else does other people could they, you know, the other papers taken from the Associated Press, they taken from the Times and the Post and all that. Right. And so what's happening is, you know, you actually are relying for original news on a smaller number of publications. Well, and how about this? By two o'clock in the afternoon or after lunch, when most of the mainland's gone to bed, you go back to one of our local websites and you're looking for national news and stuff. And it's the same thing you saw a couple hours ago. And now you're upset. Like why haven't you told, can you imagine that it used to be you'd get a morning paper, which was yesterday's news. And then you'd watch a morning news and you had to wait till five o'clock to find out what the hell was going on. Now, if I don't get it and it's not changed every 20 or 30 minutes, I feel like they're not providing me with what I should be getting. This is scary. It is scary because it's inhumane. It's inhumane. It's not humanly possible to keep providing enough news. And if I really wanted to do it, I would start providing you news from places you probably don't care about. But I could provide you new stories about things going on in Europe, or in Asia or in Africa. And the the taste for that for most viewers is not substantial enough to say I don't want to read about that stuff. So where's this all going? It doesn't sound like it's going good place. Because yes, I am disappointed when I look at the New York Times late in the afternoon and I see the same thing as I saw in the morning. I want it now. I want to know. And if I see it some other place and not the New York Times, then I say, hmm, they're ahead of the New York Times. Why does the New York Times pick this up? So you know, I think what's happening is, yes, feed the more feed the more but but there's got to be a solution. Well, the economic one, here's part of what you're getting at. And you're kind of a worldly guy. But if you're checking out BBC where it's already 8am and they're giving you update on Brexit, and it's midnight or and most of the New York Times staff has gone home for the day, you may get it from another source because again, from just the economics of the bodies required to keep feeding the coal into the beast all day and all night. It's very difficult. I will tell you, when we had the famous snafu with the Twitter alert about the North Korean missiles coming in, that was Saturday morning at 8 30. That is not a great time for any media company to have all hands on deck. It's a Saturday, your short staff to begin with. It's 8am. There's nothing really happening up until the six o'clock or five o'clock news. I give the media a lot of credit for being the first ones to break that story before the government did because people ran in on their day off and said we got to cover this. So I do think those people are there. I think they will always be there. I think they're passionate about what they do and they want to be good neighbors and good citizens and do their job well. I still see a lot of hope for that. But this idea of feeding the beast 24 hours with who said what about whom on Twitter and who made a comment about something or who's dating someone and putting that at the top of a news feed, we're reaching lowest common denominator. We are and we're not we're losing precious time and becoming educated about civic matters. He has just a short thing about the about the incoming missiles issue. I googled it immediately after I heard I wanted to see what was I believe it or not. It's unbelievable. There was a newspaper or website in Britain that had it. This is like 10 minutes after it started. It's just totally global community about it. But you know one thing I wanted to post you looking searching for the future on this searching for where it might go right seems to mean it to feed the more to get it all together. The secret is aggregation sort of an over layer of somebody who aggregates all the news that's out there somebody credible and tells you what other people are printing. Well I would tell you that credible unfortunately has become a subjective term in this day and age which is not good. But the other thing is I'm not sure that the average consumer has the interest nor the time to go through this huge aggregation you're talking about and disseminate what is important what's not important. And if you give me overkill if you give me too much information the brain shuts down and now I'm just not going to play I'm not interested. So I think what you've got now is this kind of sorted mixture of news that probably educates titillation stuff about celebrities and things like that. And then you cherry pick which ones you want to click on and go to. And I think that's the model that we're seeing right now on most credible news sites. I'm not sure it provides all the answers but Jay I got to tell you there's a large portion of the public that just is not as interested as you'd like them to be and I think we see that in things that don't get done and don't get resolved. And I'll tell you what if a politician felt that my job depends on it I got people screaming at me to get this thing done it would get done or else they lose their job. Sure. So I think what we need to do from a civic standpoint is be more involved on that end to make sure that these issues are taken care of. And there's obviously a higher hierarchy of what issues need to be dealt with first. The pothole in your neighborhood is probably not as vital as Ward Avenue or Nimitz Highway. I mean you can only have so much money to play with I understand that trust and aggregated to do that. Well don't give me don't give me the small stuff I want to know the major stuff and I'm going to trust you. List the you know the aggregated stories. You're going to trust them until you come up to one or two days in a row where they don't give you what you wanted and you found it out somewhere else in England. And you said why the heck did my guy tell me that stuff. You know you said before that you know the public likes to listen to what it already what it already believes. Right. So the base the base will you listen to anything that Donald Trump and his friends will say and knowing that a rational person would never accept that but they do they do. And you know I see this as a huge undermining of the First Amendment. I see it as a huge undermining of I see the public is not willing to analyze not willing to use critical thinking not willing to become responsible news consumers. Right. And you'll have to agree with me that in the past five ten years this is really gotten much worse. Well I think the twenty four seven news cycle has has ramped it up. But I would suggest to you that the First Amendment and free speech means anybody can say what they want. And as a as a human. I'm able to choose what I want to believe and not believe. And I do believe that when it comes to the way the political system works right now. I think as many people ignore one side. But they'll tolerate it because they are so against the other side. So I don't think you've got necessarily strong beliefs in certain things that one side says of the other. They just don't want to listen to the other side. And daddy told me a long time ago everyone's entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts. And I think now sometimes people would just prefer not to hear the facts or. There's a great song that by a group called Drive by Truckers called What It Means. And in the song it says we love scientific facts as long as they tell us what we want to hear. And it's not exactly worded that way but it's it's it's a simple line. But it's true. People if they hear something they don't want to hear when you hear a food is not good for you but you like it you go the heck with it I'm going to eat it anyway or whatever. So you know even getting the information out there doesn't mean everyone's going to do what what you might perceive to be the smart thing to do or the logical thing to do. Yeah. So I'll ask the last thing John. Sure. Advice to the news consumer advice to the information consumer. How does he conduct himself in a world where alternative facts are everywhere where people do not value truth or they can't even define truth because we have ultimately we are the government. The government is us. We have to be engaged if we're not engaged terrible draconian things will happen to our society. I think I think people feel rather estranged from the government actually which is unfortunate but it's a byproduct of where things have gone and maybe a lack of candidates sometimes. But I would say that for my dollar I would still say I relatively comfortable with what local media has to offer because I do know that there are paid professionals who are doing a job with other paid professionals watching their back to make sure they are reporting fair and someone who's even above them and above them. And if it doesn't happen and there's enough Scuttlebutt and if enough consumers are upset about something and someone's not doing a good job they will be fired in in national cable. They're often promoted. So so it's different. So if you want to know where I think the best way to get it now that isn't going to solve your problem if you've got a real need to know what's going on certainly with deeper issues in the Sudan and in with Brexit and things like that. You know a lot of people I've seen surveys that say one of the most down the middle presenting the facts you make your own decisions is the BBC. So for people who really want to know about other things than what's going on locally BBC International might be a place to go. Reuters and AP do a pretty good job of just saying here's what actually happened. And you don't get at least I don't think you don't get a lot of editorializing. And if that's what you want to avoid because you really do want to know what's going on. But again I would tell you I'm not sure a lot of people still care about that anymore they just want to feel right. And they want to feel that their guy or their gal is there and sometimes the facts or reality be damned. And that's a problem. But it's as much a problem with the consumer as it is with the people feeding it to them. Look they don't feed it if there's not an audience for it shows get canceled all the time because not enough people watch it's a pretty simple premise. That would be the same thing with news. One thought comes to me from what you said just now is that you need you need an audience. You need your own audience right in an audience to bounce off your own thinking. And it's not somebody who agrees with you about everything either. Absolutely somebody like you know you and me here together like this having a conversation. It's bouncing it off your friends. It's it's getting out of the you know your sofa. Well you know it used to be people could disagree. And they were still friends. That's I'm hearing more and more about people who won't bring subjects up with their friends or their family. We can't even have a civil discussion. And that's that's a danger to me that that's you know that civil war type mentality of not being able to discuss stuff. But I think that you have to ask yourself OK well let's step back from news for a minute. How many people who go to church on Sunday go to a different church to hear what they're talking about. How many people who love Japanese food and go in each Japanese food all the time go and eat Italian food. I'm not sure that this that I mean this is a little simplistic but how much different is it we like what we like we go where it's agreeable to us we feel good and we don't sometimes want to venture out. And I think I think my my my world view on that would be life's too short. You really should give yourself a little opportunity to see what's out there. You know people talk about in Hawaii how sometimes it's great for a kid who's grown up here to go to the mainland for college and if they want to come back and if they don't they don't get to know anymore. I got to tell you I had friends who grew up where I grew up three hours north of Chicago or an hour north of Chicago went to the University of Illinois three hours south of Chicago. And they work in Chicago. Their life has been no different than what we think of as our what's the word. Our small island our small island community that doesn't get parochial sense that what we do and we stay here. I you know people used to say do you ever get rock fever in Hawaii. And I'd say you know what we never used to drive to Milwaukee or Gary Indiana right to get away right. You do what you do when everybody lives in his own small small little silo. Yeah. So I think one of the problems when people talk about not educating and stuff. Well these are the same people who have a specific religious belief and won't venture outside of that. And there are a lot of happy and healthy people who have other beliefs. Do you ever wonder what they're thinking or talking about. And if the answer is no I don't care. That's no different than what you're talking about with news. It's a great rhetorical question but I want to want to close the show by telling me and whatever we've discussed today and I will ever open mind that we may want to be. I am not going to watch Fox News. Okay. I'm sorry. That's your call. But you know what you ought to know what it's about. I had a friend years ago who told me he wouldn't watch the Simpsons. And I said why it's irreverent. It's he said because they do some sarcastic stuff. I said well what are you talking. He said well my kids watch it. I said maybe you should watch the Simpsons to know what your kids are talking about. You don't have to like it but at least you'll have an idea what's going on. Okay. Okay. I'll watch. And I'll think of you John. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Tired TV. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.