 So for those of you who have been watching the Humanist Report for a while now, you know that I have been incredibly critical of corporate media's coverage of progressive policies, namely Medicare for All, because being adversarial doesn't mean you criticize politicians who attack Medicare for All by using industry talking points. Being adversarial means one, you educate people on what Medicare for All actually is, and two, if you want to be adversarial to someone like Bernie Sanders, you press him to explain how he's going to get this passed, for example, and to explain the policy. And when it comes to adversarialism and journalism with regard to Medicare for All, any politician who's against it has got to explain why they are against something that has been a long-term goal for the Democratic Party until it was captured by the health insurance industry and other large special interests. So I'm going to play for you two clips from the mainstream media. One will be from MSNBC's Katie Tirm, and the other will be from CNN's Chris Cuomo. Both of them will discuss Medicare for All tangentially, but the way that they talk about this is very different. One of them is basically a perfect example of what I would want to see from the mainstream media in a fair way to cover it. And the other is basically the worst-case scenario. So the first is from Katie Tirm. This is her talking to 2020 presidential candidate Michael Bennett, who, yes, is still running about Medicare for All, and she's going to press him on why he doesn't support Medicare for All. What you're talking about right now, it seems like you're saying that the democracy that we are currently living in, it doesn't work. It's broken, which calls for foundational change. But you're not a foundational change candidate. Why are you not a candidate calling for for Medicare for All, like some of the other candidates? Why are you not a candidate coming out there and saying, we need to fix Washington, and in order to fix it, we've got to change it from the ground up? Why are you still so in the moderate wing? No, I do believe that. I actually believe I'm more of a foundational candidate than the ones that are offering Medicare for All, because I know that's just an empty promise. It's just an empty promise. Why can't Canada have it? Why can the UK have it? Why can't we have it? Well, it is different from what Bernie Sanders' bill is to begin with, but there's an answer for that, which is we already have an existing health care system, and we can decide that we're going to spend the next 10 years fighting a losing battle for Medicare for All, or we can fight to restore economic opportunity for people. We can fight on the climate front. That was absolutely fantastic, because she had him stumped, and she didn't even have to try that hard to stump him, because he wasn't expecting any pushback, because usually what happens on these news shows is they'll bring on a politician who's opposed to Medicare for All and allow them to espouse corporate talking points uninterrupted for minutes at a time and use the same lines that we hear from Republicans and the industry, the health insurance industry. So we never hear a pushback from them. We never ask them, are you saying this about Medicare for All because you are taking money from the health insurance industry? I mean, we never see pushback, but what we got from Katie Ture there was excellent. We got pushback for the first time on this issue, perhaps in years maybe. So she asked them very simple questions. If you're a foundational candidate, if you believe in structural change, why not back these sweeping policies like Medicare for All? Why can Canada and the UK have it, but in the United States, we can't have it? Michael Bennett did not have an answer to any of this. His answer effectively was this is what happens with even the most minimal amount of pushback. Corporate politicians collapse because they have no core, right? They're saying the things that they're saying. Michael Bennett is saying the things that he's saying about Medicare for All because he is taking money from the industry. He is corrupt. He was bought off. So he doesn't actually believe in anything, right? So the reason why he doesn't have a response is because when you force a politician to divert away from their corporate talking points, then they're stranded. They have nothing left to say. And his pushback or his response rather was, we already have an existing healthcare system. As if the UK didn't have an existing healthcare system before getting a national health system. As if Canada didn't have a healthcare system before getting a single payer. That's not an argument. So I mean, all you have to do is apply a little bit of pressure and they become unraveled. They have no idea how to respond. So that's what I like to see. That is the ideal segment, the ideal way that a corporate pundit will cover Medicare for All. But now moving on to CNN's Chris Cuomo, he's not going to talk to a politician, but he's going to editorialize and talk about the issue of Medicare for All. It's a complete disaster. I apologize for the audio in this clip. This is all I could find. But watch what he says and listen to how condescending he is. And the dense and hyperambitious M4A Medicare for All talk seems to miss the state of play. It's like working on pretty footwork and your style when your opponent is standing there with a shotgun. Remember, this is a big part of why Trump won in 2016. Insults, not insights, simple, not sophisticated. Look, Bloomberg getting in suggests not so much that he thinks he can win. I don't know where he's getting that from, but that this field can't. His top advisor said, Mike is increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well positioned to defeat Trump. The Democratic nominee has to be properly armed for the onslaught that's coming. What does that mean? You've got to answer. Question number two, are you speaking the language that America wants to hear right now? No offense. But again, this dense talk and sophisticated policy plans, if a trillion here and trillion there in three years versus five, and I'm going to take your healthcare, this is about not being the rabid right. Do you do that if you are seen as an equal opposite of radical left, single payer or not? Medicare for All versus Medicare for All who want it. This is dense in times of determined simplicity. Democratic governor elect, promise to protect Obamacare and the Medicaid expansion. Kentucky kept it simple. He spoke the language of the local people, targeted. Many of the Democratic candidates are talking about blowing up the entire system to many. It sounds equally as crazy as what they're getting. In other words, normal people are just too stupid to understand complex policy ideas. That's basically what I took away from that clip. That is inherently elitist and it is rich-splaining. Chris Cuomo is a multimillionaire. He has a net worth of $9 million. He has a yearly salary of $4 million. So he doesn't know what normal people can or can't understand. He doesn't know what they want. His interests are incredibly different, dramatically different than a Walmart worker's interests. So for him to say, no, just keep it simple, stupid. Don't go too in-depth with these policies. He's talking at you rather than listening. Now, let me remind you, the goal of a news anchor is to educate people. You can editorialize. That's fine. But I want facts. You can supplement those facts with your commentary, but I don't expect you to come on here and basically say, don't talk about Medicare for All. No, that's not your job. You're not a politician. You're a news anchor. So tell us the news. Tell us the objective facts about reality. Now, the problem is that if you just talk about Medicare for All in a very matter-of-fact way and you just look at the details, people will begin to support Medicare for All. Hence why we saw a substantial shift in public support for Medicare for All once Bernie Sanders really started to educate people about it and campaign on it since 2015. Now, here's why he says we shouldn't focus on complex policies. Well, because Donald Trump won because of insults, not policy positions. Are you sure about that? Because he campaigned in the Rust Belt, and he talked about how trade policies devastated the working class. He talked about bringing back coal, which was a false promise, but it gave people who were formally coal miners a lot of hope that they didn't have. So he spoke to people. He had a populist message, a fake populist message, but a populist message nonetheless that resonated. It wasn't because he called people, you know, little Marco or whatever. Nobody cares about that. It was funny, sure, but that's not why he won ultimately. And on top of that, Chris Cuomo uses Mike Bloomberg to justify why he doesn't think that any Democrat in the field can beat Donald Trump because if he's getting in the race, maybe that doesn't necessarily mean that Bloomberg thinks he can win, but he certainly thinks that other Democrats can't win. Yes, because a billionaire like Mike Bloomberg certainly has his finger on the polls of America. I mean, this segment is so elitist and out of touch. Chris Cuomo is usually like one of the better anchors on CNN, more so than anyone else. He brings on progressives like Anna Casparian and Cenk Yuger. So I'm surprised that he went this route. Like, well, I shouldn't be that surprised because it's CNN and they are dog shit. But I mean, nonetheless, it still seems like he's better than this. Now, here's what he said that actually pissed me off. Are you speaking the language that America wants to hear right now? This was a question he asked, and he basically says no offense, but you know, this dense talk of sophisticated policy plans, trillions here, trillions there, and I'm going to take away your health care. This is not going to resonate. Now, who is running in the Democratic Party primary on taking away health care? Name one candidate who is running on that. Even the corporate Democrats are not running on taking away health care. Joe Biden is someone who I despise. He is not running on taking away health care, and I do not believe he wants to take away health care. He wants to build incrementally on the Affordable Care Act, which is not enough, which won't suffice, which will still leave millions of people out who will die. But do I believe he wants us to go backwards and take health care away? No. But what Chris Cuomo is insinuating here is that Bernie Sanders, he actually does want to take away people's health care. By moving to Medicare for all, that's taking away people's health care. This is a lie. This is a brazen lie from a news anchor whose duty is to educate the public, and here he is actively deceiving them. This is disgusting, morally reprehensible, and he contends that you beat the right if you are seen as the equal opposite to the radical left for whatever reason. And according to him, Democrats talking about blowing up the entire system, they sound equally as crazy as Donald Trump. But this is based on your own subjectivity, your experience as a multi-millionaire. To you, the prospect of blowing up the system, it doesn't sound appealing, because the system is working out phenomenally well for you. Your brother is a governor, your father was a governor. You are paid millions of dollars every single year to talk on CNN. So of course, from your perspective, the prospect of blowing up the system seems just appalling, right? You wouldn't want that to happen. It's self-interest. I wouldn't want to blow up a system that's working out well for me. So of course, Chris Cuomo wouldn't want to do the same. It's a matter of self-interest. But the problem is that the system has failed the American people. And that's why we're even talking about blowing up the system. That's why we're questioning capitalism. Because whenever people get desperate, they take a hard look at the system, at our economic system, at our political institutions, and they try to figure out what's working and what isn't working. The status quo is not working. Just because it's working for a select few like you, Chris Cuomo, doesn't mean it's working. So stepping back to put this entire segment into perspective, when you juxtapose Chris Cuomo segment with Katie Turre segment, the difference is night and day. I don't necessarily believe that Katie Turre personally supports Medicare for All. But what she is doing here is she is not being neutral. She tried to be fair. She tried to challenge people who are opposed to Medicare for All, who are in power in a way that other anchors have not done so far. The only other person who has actually spoken even remotely favorably about Medicare for All is Ali Velshi. But aside from them, I mean, everyone else in mainstream media has attacked Medicare for All and literally spread lies about Medicare for All when news anchors are supposed to be educating people about Medicare for All. Now to be clear, I'm not saying that they should advocate for Medicare for All. I'm not saying they need to editorialize and tell people who watch CNN and MSNBC how wonderful Medicare for All is. What I expect from news media, what everyone should expect from news media is objective facts. Tell people the facts about Medicare for All, how every other country has some form of health care where it's free at the point of service, how nobody else in modern countries go bankrupt or die because they don't have health care. Tell people the objective facts of reality. That's all I expect. Now in the event Chris Cuomo did that and then supplemented the facts with his shitty commentary, that would be one thing. But he literally lied. He didn't talk about the facts. He said that people who support Medicare for All like Bernie Sanders want to take away health care. So I shouldn't have to be educating people who probably took journalism classes about objectivity and fairness in reporting. But here we are. It just goes to show you that overall the current corporate media landscape is not working. We've got to bring back the fairness doctrine and we need to make sure that these corporate media outlets disclose the conflicts of interest. That viewers know when they're talking about Medicare for All, the reason why CNN may be saying things like this about health care and Medicare for All is because they take advertisements from Big Pharma. They pay CNN to run ads from Etna and whatnot. These are two very different examples. One of them with Katie Turr is a phenomenal example of objective reporting that is not too common in mainstream media. The other is a disaster and basically the worst of the worst when it comes to reporting about Medicare for All in the Chris Cuomo CNN clip that I showed you. I'll leave that there.