Brian Gongol
Podcast: Updated weekly in the wee hours of Sunday night/Monday morning. Subscribe on Stitcher, Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or iHeartRadio
This is an approximate transcript from tonight's show, generated via the Amazon Mechanical Turk. Some errors are inevitable.
[Brian Gongol] The biggest story, now aside, obviously, from the massive news that comes along with the earthquake in Haiti, and we'll get to that in a little bit, and how that relates to all of these things that can be done to perhaps, make life better for the people there. Not only now, trying to do some urgent recovery work, but also in the future.
And we'll get to that in a moment, but the other big news, I suppose, of the week that deals predominantly with making money, and the having of fun, is Google telling China that they have crossed the line. And the Chinese government, they have had enough of it. They are going to say that either they are going to start making their own rules, this is Google talking to the Chinese government, saying either, we, Google, get to start making some rules of our own, or we're just plain out of here. They opened up Google.cn, that would be the Chinese version of Google.com here in the United States, a few years ago. And they basically, at the time, said, "All right, well, it is better for us to give access to people in China, something. Better that we give them something to deal with on the internet, than nothing at all. And so, even if we have to censor ourselves to follow the Chinese government's rules, to try to play nicely, and get along with them. And not to allow people to criticize the government in the process. Well, if that's what we have to do, if that's the price that we have to pay, to participate in the Chinese internet, then dog gone it, we'll do it." And China sort of bit the bullet on this one. And frankly, there were a lot of us who didn't think it was the greatest idea of all time, but it could be seen, I guess, that they might see it being worthwhile. I mean after all, China does have more than a billion and a half people there, or will very shortly. And of course, many of them are internet users. And even if they have a very low penetration rate of internet users, like they say, if you could just get 1% of the market in China, that's like getting 100% of a whole lot of much smaller markets. People see a need to try to get into that market, to crack it somehow. Google said, "You know what? We're going to bend our normal rules. We don't usually like to censor information. After all, it's our mission statement that we want to organize and distribute the world's information. So we'll just back off a little bit on that one. Even if that's our predominate goal, our primary goal, we will back off just a little bit. Just enough to keep the Chinese government happy so that we can participate there."
And that, then they discovered very recently, that the Chinese government was actively involved in hacking in to their websites, and trying to break through into a lot of different things that that were services that Google provides around the world, including in China. And they came out with it right up front. Posting right there on their very own website a declaration, of sorts. I won't call it a Declaration of Independence, but definitely, a declaration of "We're not going to take it anymore". They entitled it "A New Approach to China". And they said, and I quote, starting from the very beginning of their report, "Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure, originating from China that has resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what first appeared to be only a security incident, albeit a significant one, was something quite different." They go on to say, later on, that first of all, they weren't the only ones. Others were similarly targeted. But second of all, they figured out that the Chinese government appeared to be directly targeting human rights activists in China.
Now just imagine this. It doesn't seem like much of a surprise to us. We've been talking here on WHO Radio for quite some time that China has been on top of cyber warfare for quite some time. It has been an active role that they have tried to get their military, of sorts, to play, that they want to be involved in cyber warfare, which is, they want to use their computers, instead of their guns. And instead of their troops, instead of their planes, and any nuclear weapons that they might have. Instead, they've just wanted to use those technologies in a way that would use, that would disrupt things for others. And we talked here on WHO Radio, not that long ago, about the possibility that China could be hacking into many of the systems that keep our American infrastructure working on a day to day basis. Things like the electrical grids that keep the power and the lights and the computers on, across the entire country. And not to mention those, not just those, but also things like our basic infrastructure for transportation. Can't really drive very far if you don't have stoplights that are working. And you can't work very well if the street lights are out. And you certainly can't do very much if the water systems across the country have to stop because there's no more electricity flowing to the pumps to get the water out of the ground. And so, we've thought about this as a national security issue for some time. Now whether we've done enough to prepare for it, to respond to it, to be ready for it, remains to be seen. Because there's a lot of reason to suspect that we, as a country, haven't done enough to prepare for the possibility that China could try to take us down, quite frankly.
But now we're seeing that individual companies, specific, particular companies, are being targeted. In this case, Google. And they were targeted through some back-end security procedures. And nobody really needs to get too deep into the details of exactly how it was hacked, but the bottom line was, China's government used a little bit of cyber warfare against an American company. Now apparently, this is not the kind of thing on which we call in NATO, and start firing off airstrikes, or anything like that quite yet. But it does mean that there's a very serious response that has to take place. And Google, to their credit, has said, "All right, if that's the way you're going to play the game, we're no longer going to play by your rules." And it seems fair. If the Chinese government basically cheated, and said that they were going to hack into Google's systems, then why in the world would Google, in return, decide that they would try to play by Chinese rules? It's an interesting, interesting development, because Google has never been dominant in China, anyway.
There's a company called Baidu. That is actually the website that is dominant for searching, Internet search, in China. They have about 75% of the market there. In fact we talked not so long ago here on WHO Radio about the fact that it actually is a good thing for Google to be competing in a place where they are not number one. I mean, they represent 80% of all the searches done in the United States, and much of the western world. Most of the western world uses Google most of the time to do most of its searching. But there's a place in the world where they're not number one, and it is China. And that's actually good for Google because it pushes them to develop new technologies, and to try to come up with new things that they can do, and to compete harder. And you know, it can be good to be in second place for awhile. Just ask any number of football or baseball or basketball teams that have spent quite a bit of time trying to catch up to a heated rival. You have to work harder, when you're in second place, to try to catch up to first. And so it was actually a good thing, essentially from a business angle, for Google to be involved in China.
But now that they're finding that the Chinese government isn't playing by any sort of fair rules, and they're trying to break in, literally, break into the systems at Google, in this case, apparently, to go after human rights activists. People trying to push for greater freedoms, liberties. You know the having fun part of making money and having fun that we enjoy here. Well, if that's going to be the case, then Google cannot be blamed for saying, "Look, we're not going to play by those rules anymore. And if you're going to try to cheat the system, we're going to leave your system. Or, we're going to start playing by our own rules, and try and stop us." And so I guess, really, they have to be admired for trying to do this. It's interesting the response that has now come out of the Chinese government. Basically they're just trying to play cool in the face of it saying, "Well, as long as everybody plays by our rules, they're welcome to keep playing by our rules." In essence, the text of the report, or the response that they gave to this statement, but Google, to its credit is now standing up. Some would say they should never have gotten into China in the first place. Making a pact with the devil, of sorts, in order to get into China in the first place. But in reality, maybe they had to try to get in, and maybe they had to try to play by somebody else's rules for a while, to see if they were strong enough and tough enough to get back to it. Now it looks like Google is going to have to try another set of strategies altogether, perhaps leaving China. And perhaps trying something else altogether to try to bring that world's information into a place that represents about a sixth of the world's total population. It's a pretty big deal.
And speaking of making a pact with the devil, somebody who's been prominent in American politics, and in American faith life for some time, said something incredibly stupid about making a pact with the devil, that we will be talking about here in just a couple minutes. And of course, if you'd like to weigh-in, the telephone lines are open to you at any time at 284-1040 or 1-800-469-4295. Or you can hit us up via text message, just don't do it while you're driving, at 989-1040. That's a 515 number, 515-989-1040 to send your text message, and the comment what do you thing about Google getting out of China. Should they have not gotten in there in the first place? Or are they smart now to have said, "All right, we're not playing by your rules anymore. We will play by our own rules, and if you want to try to stop us, I guess you can start throwing your resources our direction."
Love to hear from you on that, and the pact with the devil that Pat Robinson claims that Haiti had made. And which is why he claims they have now been stricken with one of the worst natural disasters in the last half century. We'll talk about that in just a moment. Stick around.
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It's 9:20. I'm Brian Gongol here on Newsradio 1040, WHO. So, we do have a lot of fog here in the state of Iowa. In fact, we have a dense fog advisory that's in effect for almost the entire state. There are about three counties up in far northwestern Iowa that are not under this dense fog advisory right now. Everybody else pretty much under a dense fog advisory until noon tomorrow. And, in fact, taking a quick peek here at your three-day weather forecast from TV 13, looks like we're going to be having fog tomorrow, and again on Tuesday. So we're going to need to, you know, use a little extra caution out there on the roadways...and what's interesting, doubly interesting, I suppose, about this is, there was a plane crash yesterday. A small plane crashed, three people aboard, all just injured, none of them killed apparently, which is good news. But three people injured in a plane crash in Cedar Rapids yesterday, and now at least two of the TV stations out there in eastern Iowa reporting now that there has been a second plane crash near the Eastern Iowa Airport. This being reported right now actually both by KCRG and KWWL. So two of the TV stations out in eastern Iowa reporting that a second plane in about 24 hours has now crashed out by the Eastern Iowa Airport. And the report here preliminarily is that it was a single engine plane, one person on board, and just injured. But that's a really preliminary bit of information. We're going to have to be keeping our eye on that. No word on whether the fog was related to it, but it's certainly possible to see how that could be the case. So if that's the case, we'll certainly hear a lot more about that coming up.
But, in the meantime, it's perhaps a reminder -- whether or not the fog was to blame, or is to blame for this -- definitely a reminder for the rest of us that if we're on the roadways, it'd be a good time to take it easy and add extra fog lamps, if you have them. And just give yourself enough following distance. And in fact right now, the real problem that we're probably going to be kicking into shortly here is that fog could start to freeze over on some of the roadways. Heavier traveled roads, maybe not so big a deal because those heavily traveled roads will have more friction from the tires going over, and that will tend to dry things off. But on the lesser traveled roads, side streets, rural roads, things like that, might be a reason to be a little extra cautious. We're now seeing that the pavement temperature sensors across the state are showing that temperatures on the roadways, including on things like Interstate 80, have now dropped to freezing or below. And that freezing line, you know, it tends to be colder the farther north you get. Well, that freezing line has now migrated as far south here as the Interstate 80 corridor. So out by Atlantic, and out by Newton, all the out to even near Iowa City, we're seeing temperatures on the roadways dropping to about 32 degrees on the roadways, which means that some of those lesser traveled roads may very well have some of that freezing fog on there. So be careful out there. And of course, if you do encounter any of those slick roads, or any kind of accidents, or things like that, you can give us a call anytime at 284-1040 or 800-469-4295, just to let us know about that.
But we were just talking, in the last segment, about how Google made, in essence, a pact with the devil, in trying to decide what to do about participating in the Chinese internet, because China has a massive, massive internet population. And, in fact, because they have such a large population overall, there are now more internet users in China than there are in the United States. Now in the United States, almost all of us are using it on a regular basis. Eighty percent of American adults are regular users of the internet now. Frankly, I'm surprised that it's not 90 or 95%, but there are still about 20% of us who are holdouts, I guess. And by us, I mean, not me. I'm certainly not one of those holdouts. And probably you aren't, either. But still, 80% of American adults [are] regular users of the internet. I'm sure that the numbers are even higher for people who are American children, because it's almost impossible to get away from it really, if you're trying even just write a regular school report. So Americans use it very heavily. The Chinese don't use it as heavily, but because there are so many more of them, there are more internet users in China than there are in the United States. Google wanted a piece of that action. So they decided that they would work with the Chinese government's rules, work among them, or under those rules, just to try to get access to that market. And then the Chinese, no surprise, double-crossed them. And now China has said, "Well, you know, we're going to whatever we darn well please." And today, actually, have now been accused, and certainly not without evidence here, that they are going after human rights activists using services like Google's services. And what's interesting about this now is that Google is turning around and saying, "Well, look, if that's the deal that you want, we're out of here. We will either leave, or we will start playing by our own rules. But we are no longer playing by yours." A deal with the devil, to be sure, that they had to make in order to get access to that place in the first place.
Pat Robertson, on the other hand, has accused the people of Haiti of being complicit in what he thinks, I'm sure, is a literal deal with the devil. And perhaps you heard about this earlier this week, when he said on one of his television programs, that they had made a pact with the devil, in order to get their freedom many generations ago. And frankly, he says that, that was the reason why Haiti was hit a calamitous earthquake, which may very easily have killed 50,000 people. We're still just trying to get a gauge on what, exactly, has happened there in Haiti, because it's such a colossal disaster. Every time you turn around, every time you turn on the television, you hear the update on the radio news here on WHO. You see it in the newspapers. Every single time you turn around, the disaster just looks even bigger. And now they're starting to worry about incidents of violence, because there is so much need there and there are so few ways for people to get it. 50,000 people may have died. But here's Pat Robertson standing on the sidelines grandstanding about the situation saying that it's their fault in Haiti because they made a "deal with the devil." And I think he probably literally believes this to be true. But having said this, and having made a statement of that sort, he now needs to be promptly ignored by everybody on the planet. He has now completely outlived his usefulness in any way shape or form to any kind of useful public discourse.
Pat Robertson needs now to shut up, because that was over the line. You cannot possibly accuse an entire island of people of having engaged in their own destruction whether or not you believe it to be the case, you certainly cannot accuse them of having done so for reasons that cannot be proven in any way shape or form. Not to mention the fact that arguing that they have made such a deal is itself pretty patently absurd. It's disgusting that he has said this at an hour when people are in desperate, dire need in that country.
And it's interesting, it's almost as though we've become self-aware of the irony of the situation that we could have any kind of comments to make about a situation there anyway. And that we can only pay half attention really. You can only pay a certain amount of attention to a disaster this large when there's nothing that we can do directly to solve the problem. And it's interesting, that this self awareness I think comes out. A friend of mine mentions on Twitter and here's his quote: "Just a minute Haiti, we'll be right back to you. We're giving prizes to all of our rich people right now." He's making this reference of course to the Golden Globe Awards. And he's right, in a sense we are telling the world "Well, we're going to put this on pause because we need to pay attention to our own little part of the world."
But the reality is, we can't pay 100% attention to what's happening in disasters around the world. We can however acknowledge that we can play a part. That there is something we can do. Americans have been very good and very generous about trying to contribute. I know anyone from the American Red Cross to Catholic Relief Services all collecting money and using it for very good purposes trying to solve the problems down there, but it's a combination of disasters. There is the immediate disaster literally buildings having fallen on people. Then there's the very short term disaster which is once you get people out of those buildings and even those who weren't actually right underneath them when they fell, well they still have to get the food and the water and the shelter. They still need some kind of very short term protection. You can only live 3 days without water. You have to have these things just in order to stay alive. And that's the very short term problem.
But the problem is that in the long term, we still have to solve whatever it is that led to this kind of disaster. We mentioned this here on WHO Radio a few years ago when there was that massive earthquake in China that killed a huge number of people. And again back when there was the tsunami that occurred on Christmas Day in the south eastern portions of Asia. When those things have occurred, the mass calamities, the disasters that kill hundreds of thousands of people and tens of thousands of people, only occur in places where there's massive poverty. And so you have to find a way to solve the poverty to have it as a life saving device in the long term.
Now those are all things that we can address. We can address the immediate need to literally extract people from the disaster and from the rubble. The very short term need to keep them clothed and housed and sheltered and get them medical attention and get them the medical supplies the need in the very short term. And frankly from my perspective it's very disappointing that this still appears to be a problem; that this still can't get done effectively. But then there's the longer term problem which is that places like Haiti have mass casualties in the midst of a natural disaster, because they are poor and we have to ask ourselves what's the best way to get them out of that sense of poverty because that's the only way you can establish both the self sufficiency to survive and be resilient through those disasters.
I mean, the same earthquake that strikes in Tokyo or in San Francisco will certainly kill people and cause lots of damage but it won't kill as many people by a long shot because they have more money that they can put into building stronger buildings and they can put into having disaster relief kits nearby. They can have extra to rely upon in an emergency. People in Haiti don't have that extra which is why it is such a mass casualty event. But in the long term, the other problem is that without a sense of wealth, without growth, without economic growth and self sufficiency and expansion in a place like that, they can't establish the governance that they need. They can't put the government into place that they need in order to make sure that when a disaster occurs, you can get a quick response. When we had Hurricane Katrina in the United States, and it hit New Orleans and caused a massive disaster there, we had thousands and thousands of people who were stranded, we did know, pretty quickly, who was to blame. FEMA dropped the ball, the Governor of the State of Louisiana dropped the ball. It was a failure of government. But there was a clear government to point at. There was a clear role that they could have had to have solved the problem, but they didn't. And there was somebody to be held accountable. Places like Haiti need greater wealth so that they can build those structures so they can bounce back and start to help themselves, because it looks like part of the problem here is, there are lots of relief supplies that are trying to get in, but there's no coordination of how to deliver them to the right people, and there's no system in place to make sure that it works. That's a threatening kind of situation, and in the long term, if we don't want these disasters to reoccur in places like Haiti or elsewhere around the world which are all subject to natural disasters. We can all fall victim to natural disasters. We've had them here in Iowa with flooding and other tornadoes and other disasters of a natural sort here. They can happen anywhere. What people need is the ability to be able to bounce back to coordinate the effort when those relief supplies come in. And, of course, the rest of the world needs to pitch in, sometimes, to help out when it is possible. You want to weigh-in on that, send me a text, 989-1040, here in the 515 area code, is a good way to get a hold of us. Let us know what you're thinking.
There is still, in the evolution of what's happening here in the United States as well, where we have a skyscraper, 52 stories tall, that they're going to shut down. The deal.
China, we were mentioning with Google, is really pushing hard to make sure that they encroach upon everybody's freedoms, it seems. At least, the human rights activists in China, they are trying to go after, and they were doing so by trying to hack into Google. What about when they're not even hacking, when they're doing everything according to, apparently, legal and legitimate means? Try this one on for size. China Radio International, the broadcasting arm of the Chinese government, basically their propaganda agency, is now broadcasting 24 hours a day in Galveston, Texas. You know, that nearby suburb of Houston. They're broadcasting there, they're renting out time on a Galveston radio station, and broadcasting 24 hours a day from China Radio International. Now, one might wonder, how are those Texans are getting along with that idea? How well is that setting with them down there? But the bigger question is this. If China is now broadcasting on American radio stations through agreements, and this is actually the second case, the first one was in Honolulu. Now, both Honolulu and Houston have large Chinese populations, Chinese immigrant populations. So the argument can be made that they are providing something that is sort of a home-style service to many of the people listening in that area. That's where they're from. So you can make that argument. You can, however, make the argument that we are actually letting China's government actively propagandize on American radio stations. So, we aren't shutting down WHO Radio here any time soon and allowing them to broadcast here 24 hours a day. But, this gets to a point that I have tried to make before that I think bears repeating, and it's this.
International broadcasting still matters. International affairs still matter, and in fact, what they call public diplomacy is more essential today than it has ever been in history. You know, most Americans, I think, are at least marginally aware of this thing called the BBC, you know, the British Broadcasting Corporation. We seem to at least be marginally aware of its existence. And that's interesting, considering that Britain is no longer the world power that it once was, it's certainly not in charge of the United States anymore. And for quite some time, they have no longer been broadcasting to an empire. The whole idea of the BBC in the first place was that they could broadcast to this far-flung empire. You know, that empire upon which the sun would never set. When they, at the time when a radio was invented, and when they first started doing these broadcasts, Britain still included everything from, well, in a sense, Canada, all the way to India. Parts of the South Pacific, down by Australia, they still do have this reach. They still are a global service today. Even though, the British Empire no longer covers that area. Now, technically, Canada and Australia and India and many of these countries still recognize the Queen as their head of state, but it's really just a formality. They're no longer really that dependent, actually, I think India got rid of that. But, many of these countries still recognize the Queen as their head of state even if they don't really need the Queen for any kind of government. They still pretty much rule themselves. But, it's interesting. That's what the BBC has done, for cen-, not centuries, but for decades, nearly a century now. The United States has a service called the Voice of America, but we never hear about it here in the U.S. because we actually have rules here that say the American Government cannot propagandize to its own people. So very few Americans are really aware of the Voice of America, which is broadcasting to the rest of the world. But this is one of the faults of the Bush administration that has not been rectified either by the Obama administration. Both are at fault on this one. We've been cutting back those services for some time. We haven't been spending more, we've been spending less on this, telling the rest of the world the Voice of America. Letting them hear from us, letting them hear an American perspective on the world at large, whether it's news coverage, information coverage, opinions or just American culture. There's a value to spreading that around the world, and there's a value to it, including news and information and comment, sort of like what you hear here on WHO Radio. But when it's not just American TV and music and film, which is what they see around the rest of the world. You know, the Golden Globe stuff that's going on. They need to hear other things, and that we have higher minded attitudes, and it's not just about glitz and glamour here, but we really do have an interest on what's happens around the world. China is now actually broadcasting here, in the United States, to get us information of their variety, whether that's true information or whether it's propaganda. They're doing it here now on a couple of radio stations here in the United States. Now, what are we doing about broadcasting to the rest of the world? We've been cutting back on that stuff rather than doing more. If there's ever been a time in history when it was time to do more of that, it's about right now.
This is interesting now that I'm mentioning Houston. Dallas, you know, just a little bit up the road there from Houston, is now having such tough times with the economy there that they have a 52-story skyscraper that is being shut down. They are literally shutting down a 52-story skyscraper. Now, what do you do with a building that is 52 stories tall that you're shutting down and no longer going to operate? Presumably, they're going to try to sell this thing and get somebody else to take it over, but in the meantime, they're kicking out the remaining tenants. It was 75% unoccupied last month, so they've decided they're kicking everybody who still remains out, and they're going to start all over again with not doing anything there. Presumably, trying to sell it to someone else. But the question is, what do you do with a 52 story building that has nobody in...speaking of the phone lines, I was telling you just a moment or two ago what I was thinking about this whole China broadcasting to the United States, and propaganda coming to us here on our very own airwaves. And I think really we in the United States ought to be doing a little bit more of that to the rest of the world, and we've cut back on it a lot and shouldn't. We got a call here on that very comment. David, giving us a call here from Newton. David, thanks very much for calling WHO.
[Caller, "David"] Hey, thanks for taking my call, Brian.
My pleasure.
[Caller, "David"] Hey, I disagree with you on Voice of America. The first thing is, who monitors? If the Voice of America broadcasts are not available to American people, who's monitoring what it is that's going out? I don't want the State Department, which right now is one of our biggest enemies, because they are the ones who are pushing the UN treaties and, or actually the ones that often fight against the Department of Defense and those kinds of things. So, they're really into this globalism. I don't want that arm of our government being our representative in speaking supposedly what freedom is.
Well, believe it or not, they don't actually do it, either. They're not in charge. The State Department...
[Caller, "David"] OK, who is?
It's actually a group called the Broadcasting Board of Governors. It's sort of like the postal service. They're their own...
[Caller, "David"] Oh, no, don't say that.
[laughs] It's truly what it is. It's an independent agency of the Federal government that operates. It's basically like a private company of its own sort that is, it has a special relationship with the federal government, in that all of their funding comes from the government, but it's operated as its own independent agency.
[Caller, "David"] Well, you know, let's take NPR, or PBS. [Brian laughs] It, I used to just...
Take them, please.
[Caller, "David"] ...propaganda, I'm not saying they're not following the law. NPR and PBS are the biggest propaganda tools for big government and world government that are on the air.
They have a perspective, that's for sure. [laughs]
[Caller, "David"] Yeah. So I, it makes me wonder if what's going to go out across America is the same stuff that's going out over NPR and PBS.
Well, not the...
[Caller, "David"] And if so, I don't want it. I don't want to pay for that.
Not that I want you listening to other radio stations, because we just want you have the WHO Radio love 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But, if you really do want sample it [the VOA], you can actually do so. It's not that they are, it's not that they don't broadcast in a way that you can't get in the United States. You used to, you still can get it over shortwave radio, but in fact you still can get streaming from the Voice of America. And you can download their podcasts. Believe it or not, it's a Cold-War invention, so the idea at the time was, it actually was a safeguard put into place. It wasn't meant to keep us from knowing what the government was doing. It was actually to keep the United States from falling victim to the mentality that they have in, or they had in, the Soviet Union and that they have now in China. Where the government would actively be trying to propagandize to the people. Actually, it was a safeguard they put into place that it was not intended for American audiences. But you can go to VOAnews.com, and that's where you can download their podcast or listen to their streams, or you can just get a shortwave radio and tune in. It's just that they were not supposed to spend their time broadcasting to the U.S. because they didn't want it to become what your feeling is on public broadcasting and that it is trying to promote an agenda using government money in the United States. So, it actually was a safeguard put into place, not something they were trying to keep us out of.
[Caller, "David"] Can we move that over to NPR and PBS?
[laughs] Well, let me tell you something. It's funny that you bring this up, David, because that was a secondary point I wasn't sure I was going to get to tonight, and I think I'll throw it in here as well. There was just a study that they just did on news reporting in the U.S., and whether it was coming from newspapers, or who was doing the original reporting these days. And what's really interesting about this is, the Pure Research Center did this one. And they actually found that a huge portion, something like 80% of all the original reporting that they found, started with newspapers and then was followed on by everybody else. But the really interesting part to all this is, they found that, and this is very much in keeping with something I said here before on WHO. It's not that the media is biased, but it's that they always trust what the government says. More often than not, they will trust what the government has to say, rather than looking for other sources, particularly in the private sector, which then has the effect of propagandizing for the government, even if that isn't what they really intended to do. And this is what they find even the private sector media do. Is that they just kind of trust anything that any government department gives them, and they think that's that's the truth.
[Caller, "David"] Thanks for taking my call, Brian.
My pleasure. Thanks for giving us a call. I appreciate it. It's 9:59 here on WHO. We made it to the very end. I'm sorry we didn't have an opportunity to have Brian Dean here with us, but we're hoping he's feeling better. Sometimes those things happen at the last minute. Got to be flexible, so that's what we like to do here on WHO. You can get the links to things we talked about. I'll put you a link there on WHORadio.com, put a link there for you if you like to check out the Voice of America and what the United States spends on this. Believe it or not, we spend more keeping the Chicago Transit Authority going than telling the rest of the world what American attitudes and opinions are. Kind of disappointing. Also put the link there on what I think we ought to do with the 52-story building in Houston, or in Dallas. We're out of time for tonight. Catch you next week here on WHO.