 A few matters, and we're talking about the press, the media, we're talking about how it is today and how it's going to be tomorrow with John Fink, former manager of K5 and other stations. He's been all around. He's a sort of a media-philosophical person, yeah, that's what you are, right, John? Thanks for coming back. As we left it last time, you challenged me to go look at Fox News. I have to tell you, I didn't. But just a couple of days ago, somebody said to me that they watched Fox News and they also talked to people who watch Fox News and they have come to this inimitable conclusion that the people who watch Fox News usually exclusively watch Fox News because they are wedded to whatever Fox News is selling and they found that they are generally ignorant on the facts as we should all understand them. This is very troubling because you know, you get out of high school, you get out of college, what's your education? Your education is the media, unless you like read books on Kindle, what not. But most people, they get it at 6 o'clock and 10 o'clock, they get it through the media, through social media. And late night comedians too, you'd be amazed how many people get their news through late night comedians. Yes, yes, not me. So you brought some articles to go further with this and here's one, A Future Without the Front Page, an article in The New York Times, a big article in The New York Times. So what's this all about? What is a future without the front page, John? Well, here's the scary thing and we can talk about national media which in many ways is not doing its job right now in terms of being a trusted source of what's really going on and you can argue on either side that that's not the case right now because they're so wedded to a constituent base to try to make ends meet with their finances to continue to do business that they've forgotten some of what I would call the golden rules of journalism. The best journalism, the best opportunity I think people have right now to get, I don't know if I can use the word unattainted, but certainly less tainted news. Is it the local level? Because the local level, it's people in your community who live in your community, you're going to see them around town, they do have a vested interest in what goes on in that community. They have people whose jobs it is to make sure they're reporting fairly, which of course is subjective and this article in the New York Times tells me that over the last, I think it's 10 or 15 years, 2000 newspapers have gone under, some of which are weeklies, some of which are freebies, some of which are dailies and the question then becomes if the newspaper, and this goes back over 200 years, if the newspaper in town is not covering the local news, keeping an eye on the city council meetings, making sure the board of water supply and everybody's doing what they're supposed to be doing, because they know that someone's watching, who's going to keep an eye on this stuff? Very troubling thought. What happens if they don't, John? According to the initial research that has been done in the years since some of these entities have gone out, almost all of those cities or small towns ended up paying either higher taxes or paying more for their water or a few other utility issues and it's harshly because there's no one there to represent the general public from people who might have other interests outside of supposedly the general public, because that's what they're elected to do, Jay, but we all know that people have influencers on the outside and it just makes the system become more questionable. It's not a good scenario. Well, the most important indicia of democracy is public confidence. That's the same thing with the stock market and the economy, public confidence. And we spoke before the show and this fascinates me about the, not the 19th century, but the 18th century, in the century in which this country was formed, the Constitution was written and the basic principles of our democracy were established and in that environment we had engagement. We had people talking to each other and the founding fathers, they were working on that environment, but the environment has changed. Can you talk about that? Yeah, back then the only way to get things done was to talk to each other and to sit down and write something up and then come to a consensus, never absolute, but a consensus and the way the original bylaws of this country were framed were such that at that time these people who were very smart, God knows they had plenty of faults, but they thought they had a pretty good feel and they did in the 1700s for the way things were. Things have changed dynamically as you might expect in almost 250 years. That word of mouth is not so much the way we get our information anymore. We get it through massive amounts of electronic data and information. And we still talk to each other once in a while, but nowhere like we used to. And people talk about the political scene now and how it's split. It was horrible back then. Read any of the, I mean some of the things that were said about politicians in the 1800s. I mean there are quotes that I won't go into today about candidates, wives and things like that that were just horrible. But that's the way it's always been. But there wasn't the platforms we have now to get information and more importantly misinformation or to put disinformation to devalue what is actually true out there. And that is now absolutely rampant on a worldwide basis. So one of the concerns is how do I know what to believe anymore? And how do I know that the people who are providing me what I think is accurate, if I care about accuracy, are truly doing their jobs? There's not a definitive answer to that yet. No, and the reality is a lot of people don't even ask the question. They just, they take it as it comes. The social media is so much fun, it's so high tech, it's so easy. And they get all that information and they build it into their mind. And maybe our way of thinking, our psychology, our group psychology, has changed, maybe the brain of a millennial faced with the social media, all his or her life is a different brain. Yeah, I think it is. And I think that there are already psychologists and sociologists who are pointing out some of the dangers in that and where it may lead us. The sense of anxiety, the heightened anxiety in our world today, not only because of what's going on, but because I can so easily be tripped up by some idiot online making accusations and false statements about me. It used to be used to have to walk around the schoolyard and tell people one by one why so and so was a jerk or something they had done. Now it becomes easy for anybody, and I do mean anybody, to put stuff out there. So the beauty of what these tools were supposed to allow us to do, as is often the case with humans, is now being used by the least common denominator for the lowest possible reasons. And it can be frightening. I know of people who have been harmed, I won't say irreparably, but harmed and damaged by things that have come across on the internet which had no bearing in truth. And yet it went out to a circle of people that they associated with and they had to spend their time deciding, do I fight back? Do I ignore it? You know, well, the old thing in court was you would plead the fifth, right? Because I don't want to incriminate myself. A lot of people said, oh, he must be guilty, or she must be guilty. Nowadays, you can do the same thing with the internet. And then you've got people wondering, well, why don't they respond if this is not right or unfair? And the reason is who wants to get into a war of words with someone who's not dealing with logic and reality. So it's a potentially ugly scenario. Well, talk about ugly. We have divisiveness in the country, and it strikes me. It's just working on this theory as social media and this anonymous nastiness, not to use Trump's word, but this anonymous nastiness that comes at us in general. We are susceptible to the divisiveness using social media. It does divide us. It has a propensity to divide us. Absolutely. It has a propensity to encourage hate. How does that work? Well, I think when you think about people who might have sublimated and kept underneath some of their feelings for the betterment of the world around them and the people they would associate with, this anonymity online, this viral stuff you can do, allows you to get it out there without having to actually take credit for it sometimes, and allows you to vent, whereas before, in a civil society, you would say, calm down, count to 10, and deal with what's out there and deal with the reality of the world now. It's not like it was 30 years ago. It's not like it was 50 years ago. Here's the new reality, how do I fit in? What you've got is more and more people trying to convince you, you don't have to fit in. We need to go back to certain things that weren't so good for a lot of people in the old days that we can make better now. And there are people sitting at home or in their basement or in their mother's basement and going right on. I finally have someone speaking for me. And sometimes that can lead to dangerous and ugly solutions. I didn't latch onto that, because that's resonant for you, and you listen only to that and you speak only to that. We've always been tribal as the human race, whether it's with your fraternity, your religious group, your softball team, your business cohorts. We tend to form tribes, your neighborhood, your ethnic groups. We tend to form tribes. And in doing so, we sometimes tend to exclude people who don't look like us, sound like us, say the same things we do. That can't be healthy in a planet with 7 billion people. There's no end game where that works out. That's a bad science fiction movie to think that you could do something like the Romulans in Star Trek and try to take over. And I don't mean for those Romulans out there. You guys have come a long way. I'm sorry, but the old regime. So extending that a little further, extending that to the natural conclusion, as you suggested, if we keep doing this, if we keep having this irresponsible, anonymous, hateful kind of messaging going on among billions of people, all negative, all dices. Not all negative. I mean, there's a lot of positive stuff and people trying to do reparation work and trying to bring people together, but you've got both sides of it, absolutely. And since you have both sides and people are not able to make the distinction, then what happens is you lose trust in everything. I had a conversation with somebody here in the building not too long ago and she said, she says, I don't trust the press. I don't trust any of the press. I don't trust anything that's written or broadcast. I have learned not to question so much, but distrust, avoid, ignore, all press. This very scary statement. Yeah, I think that person has given up far too early. I think there is still hope out there. I think a lot of what you get on a day-to-day basis keeps you informed. It is up to you, ultimately, to decide how much further you wanna go with that to learn more about what really is going on or look underneath it to try to find trusted, reliable news services that you're comfortable with or that you find out have been vetted, that you're comfortable getting it because you don't wanna go through life ignorant. And it's not all horrible and bad stuff, but there is that out there and a lot of it is not even coming from the media. It's coming from anybody who throws anything up anytime they want, anywhere they want. Including the Russians. Because they can. Well, they have an end game to this. Yeah. So, okay, if this keeps on happening, you say I have to make a decision that I am only going to listen to things that are likely to be true. That I'm gonna regain my trust by using my critical thinking and I am not gonna accept the jump that is being thrown at me. I may say that, but A, can I do it? Because I'm suggestible, everybody is to some extent. And B, there are those out there, John. And I know we've talked about this. There are those out there that would like to confuse us that affirmatively go out of their way to confuse us. Whether it's about a product or a fact or alternative fact. And so you have this environment, this stratosphere, ethosphere, whatever it is, of fake this and fake that and confusion and distraction. This, as far as I can see, you can disagree. This is where we're going. We're going to more of this. So how do I fix this? I think the fact that we're aware of it is a good start. We're not being snowballed by this stuff. So we're aware of it and as individuals, we can choose which way we go. What I would worry about more, Jay, is if we felt there was nowhere to go anymore. And I don't know who you were talking to, but I think they're wrong. I think there are plenty of places you can go where you can get a modicum of news and information that is useful for you and your family and your friends and your community and your business associates and your friends in other places. And I think you can still trust it for the most part. But if you want to say we need to be more skeptical now than we used to be, not cynical, but skeptical, okay. I think there are a lot of institutions in this world that we need to be skeptical about. I was reading something the other day that of course, right after World War II, 75% of Americans had absolute faith and trust in their government. Now it's down like 20%. That's the government. That's not the media. These are the decision makers, not the people passing the information along. These are the decision makers. The voting record in this state is horrendous and it is in a lot of places. I think that's an indication that people think their vote doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who wins. Nothing's gonna change or get better. And I think we need more people in leadership positions, not administrative, not management, but leadership positions to stand up for things and do things the right way and let their track record be the proof that, okay, I've seen what they've done over the years. Pretty good track record. I may not agree with everything they've done, but I know why they did it. It wasn't to pay back a favor to somebody they owed that wasn't in our better interest and things like that. I think we need to have more of that restoring of faith. Okay, we're gonna take a short break, John Fink. We come back, I'd like to know who. Who is gonna be the leader? What institutions, what media is gonna be the leader? The big question is, where does government fit in all of this to be a leader and to help us vet this information so we make better decisions as citizens? Wow, and that's gonna be in 15 minutes. We'll be back in one minute though. You'll see, we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years and we're fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championship. This show is based on my book, which is also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence, achieving and sustaining success and finding greatness. If you're a student, parent, sports or business person and want to improve your life and the lives of people around you, tune in and join me on Mondays at 11 a.m. as we go Beyond the Lines on Think Kauai, Aloha. Aloha, my name is Becky Samson and I'm the host of It's About Time. On the Think Tech Kauai, a digital nonprofit organization that's raising public awareness. Join us on Wednesday at 2 p.m. where we talk about real issues. Some of the topics will include entrepreneurship, health, life skills and growing your business. So once again, this is Becky Samson on It's About Time. On Wednesday at 2 p.m. on Think Tech Kauai, Mahalo. I'm so sorry you weren't around for the break because John Fink was waxing. See if I can recapture that. You don't have to, it's okay. Okay, we're looking for ways to help me vet and I say me, I mean all of us to help this community here in Hawaii, for example, get it straight. Trust the government, trust the news. Trust each other. Be a community that actually thinks better and votes better and responds better to things that are not straight. You know, trust each other is a simple one. You screw me over. I'm not with you anymore but you're not that big a deal in my life. Don't trust the government or don't trust the media. There are bigger implications there. So I think what we need to do at this point in time in an ideal situation is more altruistic people need to come forward and serve the public or do more public-private partnerships. That's what I'd like to see more of. Where people in the private sector get involved with the public to use some of the funding available to make it work for the rank and file people and not just the multimillionaires who buy the big condos in Kakaako. Okay, that's not what I would call affordable housing. And of course that term affordable housing is like jumbo shrimp. What is affordable to you is not the same thing that's affordable to me. So we should stop using the term affordable housing and start putting some real dollar figures on it and say, can you live in Hawaii, make 50 to $60,000 a year and own a house or a condo or an apartment? If the answer is no, then you better figure out where we're gonna put all these people because they're all coming out of college and getting their first jobs and some of them aren't coming back home. And we've known about this for 20 or 30 years. Done nothing. And the problem that I find in this state, Jay, that drives me crazy is we know these problems exist and we talk about them and we put task force together and we say plans for 2050 and 2045 and nothing gets done. And if you want some basic examples of it, how about the Natatorium? Perfect. How about the Falls of Clyde Boat? Perfect. How about the Stairway to Heaven? Perfect. Vetted, discussed committees shelved and tabled and we'll bring it up again next year because we just don't make decisions on things. So this is serious problem. I mean, can we say this exists all over the country or the world or is this just special to Hawaii? I think it exists in some form in a lot of other areas. Everybody's trying to figure out how best to use their money. We keep talking about education in Hawaii because you have to. That makes you sound like you care. But what are we doing about it? We have major issues with our schools and we're finally just getting around to providing, this is beyond comprehension, air, air, which I did many editorials about a few years ago. How long have we been talking about that? 30 years, 30 years and more because I have parents of kids who can't breathe now who said they couldn't breathe back then. But we have more areas, Mililani in the leeward side where it gets really hot and there's dust and there's no air. And we wonder why test scores don't go up and we wanna blame teachers. These kids can't breathe. So now we're retrofitting the electricity, we're doing some smart things with solar and whatever to make it better. But why did it take so long? We knew what the problem was all along. If they can't breathe, they can't think. You wouldn't put your dog in some of these classrooms and we have students in there. I was talking to a substitute teacher, I won't say with school because they now have fans and they're getting some stuff done. She was eight and a half months pregnant. Said almost fainted a number of times. She had paper towels in the front that when the kids came in the first thing they would do is grab paper towels, take back to their seats. The first kids who ran in got the front seats which meant they got the only fan in the room. When they all got in, in the first period, they took black paper and put it up on the windows to keep the sun out. This is a true story. It's ridiculous. This is the year, I believe it was 2016. This was not 1912. You're talking, or 1812, it's the case maybe. You're talking about government. You're talking about leadership in government. Well, I'm talking about government but let's not be so dependent upon government. Let's, government needs to loosen its hold of everything and work in partnership with the private sector which can be more entrepreneurial and has seen the real world and does know some tricks of the trade that many career politicians, which again is another oxymoron, but career public, they just don't know how to get certain things done. I understand that. They're busy with process and administration and discussing things. And many of them altruistically trying to do what's best for our state. Well, you know, problem is though that, I say to you in a hypothetical conversation, John, you got some great ideas and you know, you're old enough to vote. You're also old enough to run for office. So why don't we run you for governor? No. And you say, no, never. I'm sorry, Jay. I'd rather do what I can do from the private sector where I'm much more comfortable and I've seen some of the great things that the private sector has done and oftentimes in conjunction with government, the homeless village down on Nimitz Highway. That was a public-private partnership. If you've driven past there, you'll see the units they're using. They were used in Japan after the earthquake to house people for a while and now that they don't need them, we got them from there. I'm not sure government figured that out. Somebody had to be the leader. But somebody had to be the leader. Who was the leader? Dwayne Carisu. We know, we've had them at one of our programs. So the question really is how do you motivate, how do you find more Dwayne Carisu's? How do you find more people who will actually go out, spend the money, spend the time, put everything else aside and do the right thing and be successful in it to call for action? And where does that fit with the press too? Well, I don't think the, I don't know what the press has to do with that, but you're asking why don't we have more people who have done well on a number of fronts, and I don't just mean financially, but have done well for their employees, for their communities, for humanity on the private level. How do we get more of them to get involved with the government? Well, some of them say, not on your life, why do I want to be under that scrutiny every day? And I think they can do what they can do, like the Bill Gates Foundation. He doesn't have to run for office to help people get over malaria. Are you saying this is a billionaire issue? Well, I do think that having money allows you the freedom to say, what do I want to do with my time? Warren Buffett is going to give whatever he's going to be worth, $100 billion back to charity when he dies. That's great. I'd like to see him do it next Tuesday to get things started. I want all these dreams and aspirations, all these conversations to come true. And I'm looking for a leader who will not only change public opinion, foment political will, but will actually go to the hundred yard, go for the touchdown, actually make it happen. And that is really a combination of things. It's a combination of education, it's a combination of enabling empowerment. It's a combination of government. One of the things, if I said, John, I'm going to run for governor, right? You would say, Jay, be careful. Because you'll be criticized, there'll be hit pieces on you. I would not say that. I would say you probably know that because you're smart enough to know what it would take to run for governor, but just be careful and make sure you live up to the values that made you want to run in the first place. I think a lot of people forget. Well, I think they're very altruistic going in and I think the system beats the crap out of you. You want me to help you with this? Here's what I need you to do for me. About the 45th time you hear that, I think you're probably jaded a little bit. And that's unfortunately, I think, too often the way it works. So to me, the answer is, I think we need to get more people involved in the nonprofit area who are wonderful people to maybe aspire to move up and help out with bigger causes because they know how difficult it is when you don't have a lot of money to work with. This is not just a money issue. We need people who are willing to do it, but I think a lot of it, to get it done, to not have it stonewalled, ignored, flipped over 52 times in the pan for the next 20 years, I think you need to figure out a way to do it either with government's blessing or in a public-private partnership. I really think there are opportunities there. I think the press has something to do with this. Let me tell you my thought about that, is that you were talking, we were talking about the 18th century and the engagement, the conversation among people, among citizens, if you like, and we need that now. Social media's not gonna solve the problem. If I'm gonna go out and do something, if I'm gonna do a Dwayne Karisu project and all that, I want a certain amount of feedback. When people say, great job, Jay, good, you did this, we're with you, and that means the media because the media is that conversation such as it exists today, but the media doesn't necessarily do that. The media's very cautious about opinions. It's the old-fashioned, you know, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, wait a minute, you can't have it both ways. You can't have an opinionated media that you don't trust because they're not towing the line on being objective and then tell me that they should be slapping people on the back when they do things right. You can't have it both ways. They should report on what's going on and let me as a consumer tell you, that's a great story, that's a great effort. But I don't think they should necessarily have to be grandstanding. And frankly, if my ego requires the social media people to tell me, great job, then I'm going into this for the wrong reasons. Yes. You got to do it because you want to make a difference and you think you're helping out and there doesn't seem to be a downside to it. And at the end of the day, if you want to think of it from an ego standpoint, is this will be part of my legacy to have left this behind for future generations, whatever the project is, then good for you. But what about that partnership? What about a community process, a community agreement that this is what we have to do? You really need the media to be one leg of that stool, at least one leg of that stool. And for the media to be one leg of that stool, they have to pat you on the back. They have to make positive statements. I could create, say a homeless project, a huge homeless project. And then they could find out that my sub-manager was involved in some sexual abuse matter and go after him, okay? And that's news, that's fact. People want to know that, but it has a very negative effect on my project. And little by little, they can wreck my project with facts, total facts. So I think that the media has to be able to express opinions. They have to be responsible opinions. Or they have to allow a platform where people can express opinions. I'll allow social media, but more vetted, more responsible. One of my suggestions to the Star Advertiser is you only have like five or six letters in a given newspaper on a given day. Why don't you have pages and pages of letters to the editor and see what people think we really don't know. You have to remember that's a very small sliver. I don't care how many letters you get, it doesn't represent the larger constituency base. There are certain people who write letters every day. I know that. And sometimes you'll see a name and you'll go, that name looks familiar. And it's because they've been in there a couple of weeks or months earlier. So be careful, and the same thing with social media, do not assume that a sliver, a niche, represents the broader consensus out there. We need to be very careful on that. The second thing you need to be careful of in terms of you were suggesting the media while reporting facts about someone who's been accused if something would hurt a project. Now you sound like what the Trump people would say, because they've had so many people that have had issues. But wouldn't you be the first one to tell me that's the media's job is to bring those things up? No, I want the media to actually try to have our community succeed. And it's not as simple as reporting the facts and not making opinion about whether this is a valid project. I think it's a combination of those things. That's just me. Well, and I would tell you, then you need to make sure you separate the editorial base from the day-to-day reporting. And those are very hard to separate. Everybody's opinionated. Every reporter who goes out there, and I've worked with a lot of them, they have their own special tendencies, their own feelings and stuff. When they have to report on something that isn't their cup of tea, they have to really be professional about it, Jay, to make sure that someone doesn't sit back and say, wow, that guy was really showing his side of it and stuff. Because you wouldn't want that as a viewer. In the New York Times, they got a big section on opinion. They call it opinion. They call it opinion, but it's some of the same people who deal with the editorial. That's true. And the advertising and everything. There's something crazy about that. I wish I could tell you the walls were solid, but they're not. They wear different hats depending on what the day of the time is. And you hope they can be as forthright and honest with that as possible. But at the end of the day, they're all human beings. You know, I wish I could say that we're done with this conversation, but I can't. It's the same thing as the last time we spoke. We're not done. Okay. It was miles to go before we sleep, John. Well, we were gonna get into the whole what's up with local media, and I guess we'll have to save that for another day. I have the articles you gave me. So we'll come back, right? We'll do it again. Absolutely. All right, John Fink. Jay, thank you. Appreciate it, John. Have me on. Take care.