Israel, Trump, and the media

America, Actually with Astead Herndon

Journalist Mehdi Hasan joins Astead Herndon to discuss the deepening credibility crisis in mainstream media and the shifting landscape of Am

Key takeaways

• Mehdi Hasan argues that mainstream media lost credibility by failing to use explicit language regarding racism and genocide.
• The coverage of Gaza has become a proxy for broader debates about political corruption and the influence of dark money from AIPAC.

Main topics

• Media credibility crisis
• Press freedom and Trump

Notable quotes

The genocide in Gaza is the number one story.

Conclusion

The episode underscores how racial identity, media ethics, and foreign

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) SpaceX had a huge opening on the public stock exchange, but their story has changed a lot since opening day. Anthropic and OpenAI are lining up to IPO next. What does that mean for them? And more importantly, what does that mean for you? What's an IPO anyway? And should you be investing in them? I'm Vivian Tu, your Rich BFF, and on this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, we're getting into the weeds on IPOs, what they tell us, and what we should and should not be doing with them. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com slash Your Rich BFF. Speaker 2 (0:30) With just 43 days till the midterm elections, we're adding a second America Actually episode every week to dig deeper into the topics that we've been following throughout the last year and the themes that will shape November's vote. This week, I talked to journalist and co-founder of Zateo News, Mehdi Hassan, and I wanted to talk to him about Trump's recent press ban, how mainstream media has lost credibility, and how changing public sentiment about Israel is shifting both parties. Let's dig in. Hey, Mehdi, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate your time. Thank you for having me, Astead, although I feel like your studio-wise, you're in a very happy place and I'm in a very dark and Speaker 3 (1:15) dystopian place. Speaker 2 (1:15) This is how we get people. We signal color and fun, and so then it's Speaker 3 (1:20) a Speaker 2 (1:20) surprise. I'm here Speaker 3 (1:21) for it. I'm here Speaker 2 (1:21) for Speaker 3 (1:21) it. Speaker 2 (1:21) Monday fun. Let's do it. I just wanted to start with kind of your past. How long has it been since you left MSNBC? I left Speaker 3 (1:29) MSNBC, now known as MSNOW, two and a half years ago. I left in February 2024. My shows were canceled in November 2023. And I left in February and I launched Zateo shortly afterwards. Speaker 2 (1:42) I mean, there's been so much change in media even over those two and a half years. I mean, what's the biggest difference between hosting a traditional cable news show and what y'all are doing now? Speaker 2 (1:53) There's Speaker 3 (1:53) so many. I think the instantaneousness of it. I think, you know, the quick turnaround. Even this, just sitting down with you. I mean, it's just, you know, I turn up in the morning, I'll go into my studio and turn on the camera and do a live with Aston. I think the speed, obviously, is one thing. For me, I talk a lot about this. It may sound cliched, but the freedom. For me, the freedom is number one. I mean, what is the number one thing I enjoy? At the time, I was very upset when MSNBC cancelled my shows. I'm not going to lie about that. Obviously, who's happy about having their shows cancelled? But in hindsight, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Thank you, MSNBC. I now have the freedom to do my shows, run a company. We just expanded Zateo to the UK. We've gone international. So we are able to really be ambitious. We're able to be innovative. And we are able to say whatever we want. Speaker 2 (2:39) Whenever we want. I Speaker 3 (2:40) mean, Speaker 2 (2:40) when you say freedom, I think I know what that means. But for some folks, I don't think they really do. Like when we talk about kind of reporting under the institutional guidelines versus where you're at now, like where it's an example of a story that's been served by that freedom. Speaker 3 (2:55) The genocide in Gaza is the number one story. You can't say the G word on cable news or national news. And if you do, people jump on you immediately to say, oh, that's just one side of the argument. Oh, that's not true. Oh, that's a blood libel. So I think that's a classic. When I launched Zateo, I said very bluntly, one of the reasons I was launching a media company is because I wanted to have a journalistic space in which people could say the F word, fascism, the R word, racism, and the G word, genocide. I mean, racist is a really interesting one. From the Trump first term onwards, and you know this from your New York Times days, you would have editors. saying to you, well, you can't say he's racist because we don't know what's in his heart. And that would kill me. That would give me ulcers. The idea that you can't say, you know, when Donald Trump says all Somalis are garbage, if that's not Speaker 2 (3:37) racist. The word racist has no meaning. We're going to talk about media credibility. We'll talk about the G word also later. I wanted to ask, though, first, like, how do you see your role? Like, now that you have this sort of freedom, is it still pure journalistic pursuit? Is there some advocacy? Do you feel personally invested in candidates that reflect your language? Speaker 3 (3:59) It's Speaker 2 (3:59) a great question. Speaker 3 (4:00) There is a lot of... debate and discussion about this in the independent space, as you know. And, you know, we, with the greatest respect to many of my friends who are in the left-wing media space, our YouTube content creators, that is not what we are. We still claim to be, people may disagree with us, but we certainly claim to be an independent media company. We are adhering to basic journalistic guidelines, ethics, rules that I've absorbed in my, whatever it is, 25 years as a journalist on both sides of the Atlantic, that my team, the people who work for me, come from places like CNN and MSNBC and Al Jazeera. and all over the place. Axios, we have people from all over. Everyone's learned what they've learned. I'm not asking people to stop being journalists when they come work for Zateo. So in that sense, for example, I don't go to candidate fundraisers. I try and avoid those. I don't endorse candidates. Zateo didn't endorse a candidate. People say to me, you said, I get lefties telling me all the time, you said a vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, even though she was pro this, pro that. I'm like, actually, I never. I just said that Kamala Harris would be a better president than Donald Trump, which is a statement of obvious, blindingly obvious fact. But I never told. people, you should vote this way. We didn't do an editorial board endorsement. We could have done. We haven't done. So no, I know that the critics want to say, oh, you're just an advocate. You're an activist. As pejoratives, nothing wrong with being an advocate or an activist, but that's not what I am. If I wanted to be an activist, I would Speaker 2 (5:15) be. I'm an opinion journalist. It's Speaker 3 (5:16) very Speaker 2 (5:16) clear what I am. I want to ask someone about some of those traditional media outlets. We know there was the big news out of Washington this weekend, how Trump has moved forward with banning your former employer, now MSNOW, CNN, and Politico from the White House. Today, we learned that he's also ban them from the press pool, which has prompted what we think will be a lawsuit soon. I'm sure we both agree this is an assault on free press and that Donald Trump has consistently shown himself to be a president who does not prioritize those constitutional values. But I guess I worry that the public doesn't care. Like, what do you think media could do to really raise the alarm on public consciousness about the assault on the free press? The one simple thing it could do is have a sense of consistency. Speaker 3 (5:59) Yeah. You cannot have the White House Correspondents Association saying this is bad after we just saw them host him twice for a dinner. I'm sorry, if I'm in the public, I'm not going to take the White House Correspondents Association seriously either. I'm not going to take them seriously because you were just, you know, hosting and celebrating. You Speaker 2 (6:13) were just on the dais Speaker 3 (6:13) with them, yeah. You Speaker 2 (6:14) were Speaker 3 (6:14) just on the dais. And now you're going to be with them again next year. Let's not pretend they're not going to go back to the same relationship. So I think that's number one. Like, have some consistency. And number two, you know, solidarity. We're seeing some solidarity. I saw Ben Mullen, media correspondent at The Times. I just saw a tweet just an hour before I came in. came on the show saying, this is unprecedented solidarity from news networks putting out this statement. I'm like, great. Only took 11 years, I said. Only took 11 years. I think that's how a lot of the public Speaker 2 (6:38) feels, too, is that these attacks have been consistent for so long. Why did it take till access was restricted in these ways for us to see said solidarity? But at the same time, like, if that ship is sailed, that's still bad for us all. Of course. It does feel as if there should be something or... Speaker 3 (6:54) But Speaker 2 (6:54) we brought it on ourselves, we being the mainstream media, the Speaker 3 (6:57) media itself. And, you know, I spoke to an audience at Rutgers on Saturday. I did an event and I was talking about independent media and mainstream. media and somebody in the audience said, you know, you're attacking Trump, but the media did this to themselves. I said, sure, 100%. Media are not innocent when it comes to the credibility crisis. You go back to 2003 and the Iraq war and the WMD. Do you want to talk about fake news? Fake news was pushing WMD BS, which they did in 2003, including your former paper, including the Post, including BBC, including CNN, go through the list. So I think, look, I'm not excusing the media's own role in this. Donald Trump has played his role, but the media helped him do it. You know, I'll just give you one example. He said a few weeks ago, he said to a female reporter on Air Force One, quiet piggy. Yeah, Speaker 2 (7:38) yeah, yeah. Speaker 3 (7:38) Insane statement. That could have been Speaker 2 (7:40) the protest moment. That Speaker 3 (7:41) could have been the moment where every network came out and said, we will not have any female reporters go on any interviews because the president is a misogynist, is a sexist. Again. Those are not, that's not a subjective opinion. That's not an objective description of what he did, right? And they didn't do it. Every time a reporter was passed over by Trump and attacked, other reporters could have said, I'm going to ask the question that guy just, you refused to ask. Every time he threatened to throw someone out, others could have said, well, we'll walk out in turn. They never did it. There's never been solidarity amongst our media. It's not just Speaker 2 (8:10) Fox, all of them. Yeah, I think that's an important point. I wanted to ask, though, like, how would you grade media coverage of Trump's second term? Like, do you think we've learned any lessons? Has there been any improvement from Trump one to Trump two? Like here, for example, let