Bay Area Innovators on the State of Journalism and Beyond at Epoch Times Insider Forum

Welcome to a special edition of Bay Area Nouvelles. I am Steve Espas. Today we're at the Epoch Times Insider Forum, where many of the people we've interviewed over the years came together under one roof. It gave me a feeling of a small reunion. My colleague Siamak Karami and I grabbed a few minutes with as many of them as we could and we asked everyone the same three questions. Laura, welcome back to our program. You were one of our first guests when we started the show. Tell us, what is your feeling about the state of journalism in the U.S. right now? Well, of course, as we all know, it's highly polarized. And I find that very unpleasant because so much of what you're reading every day is why the other side is bad. And even when I agree with something, I just don't need to have my life filled with that repeated message. and another aspect that I find today in journalism, so much of it is about predicting what's going to happen tomorrow. Like, I don't need to hear people's predictions. I just want the facts. I'll make my own predictions because I know that their predictions are not really facts. It's just opinions. Well, I mean, it's become a very divisive issue, which is unfortunate. I mean, when I was in school, we took a class on journalism and I will always remember this one part of the class. They said, okay, you have to write a story, Someone has died. He was rumored to be a heavy drinker and he could have been an alcoholic and he had liver issues, but death was not determined. What do you write in the story? And someone said, well, we write that, you know, alcoholism was probably contributed to death. No, you have no evidence. You don't have evidence. You don't have facts. You don't report it. And now it's like the tiniest little rumor and poof, it turns into a huge story. And the problem with this is that journalism has changed because the drivers of journalism have changed. If you think back to sort of when I was young and, you know, I think you know this, I was a freelance writer for 10 years and I was really respected trying to get to the, you know, substantive truth underneath. The papers were published and paid for by advertising and subscription. Today, they're paid for by clicks. And so everybody, and when journalists themselves are compensated for how well their stories are read, all of a sudden they need. Based on the clicks. Yes, exactly. So it's the 10 things you didn't know or you'd be surprised to find out. No, just give me the facts. Like the facts are what journalism should be about. And I think that that's one piece. The second part is that we've become so politically divided that all of a sudden everybody has to take a side. One of my brother-in-law happens to be a very conservative type, a big Trump supporter. My daughter, not so much, doesn't like that at all. I think they basically don't talk to each other anymore. So when he moved into a new house in Southern California, they said Fox News or CNN. That's it. What an offensive question. You ask me that question, I'm like, neither. I read the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the FT every day. That's it. They have different perspectives. I figure amongst those three, I'll find out what source truth is within some reason. So now I think people pander to their audience and based on their audience's interest, and that just makes it hard. And I don't think there are a lot of folks left. That's why I read three, because that way I feel like if one's liberal and one's conservative and one's British, you know, well, then fine. We'll figure out something. Well, I guess I've been in journalism for quite some time, probably 30 years. And it's chaotic because the media is chaotic. You know, there's such a rapid state of change in the media that everything gets kind of confusing. Back when I worked for NBC magazine with David Brinkley, there were three networks. Yes. And now there are a million networks. So I was a story producer for him, and we were competing with 60 Minutes. But there was only a few of us at that time. And now everybody with a cell phone becomes a journalist, right? So that's why it's chaotic. I think the state of journalism is going all to social media and the podcasts. And that's been a trend for a while, so I know that's not news. but I think fewer and fewer people are watching mainstream news. I think the people's voice is being heard more, and so that's really protected by our First Amendment. But then that gets into the issue of the government wanting to clamp down more on our First Amendment, which is kind of interesting. When we're truly exercising the First Amendment, the government doesn't really want us to have it. It is now being exposed as what it has tragically become. The journalism had become just a prepaid resonance music box for whomever was in power. Now, with all the social media boom and efforts like the Epoch Times, now we're getting back to real journalism, the compromised journalism, a journalism that goes beyond what everybody wants to listen to and how everybody wants to listen at it and how very strategically power, those in power are sending the messages. We, now with what is being dismantled and what is being shown, we're getting, I think we're getting back on the road of real, true, truthful, and very committed journalism. Well, I would say that you, I mean, we have some good independent journalists that are helping out in the Oakland area, for example. People like Seneca Scott, other people who actually helped recall the Oakland mayor a few years ago. So right now, independent journalism is suffering in the Bay Area, a place that was once the so-called liberal bastion. A lot of people are scared to just tell the truth about what's going on in terms of Oakland issues, what's happening with property owners in terms of overtaxation. And independent journalism is the only way we can really get the word out. the local news stations they don't really cover this stuff and that's the sad part well it's such a big topic i mean i'm not an expert in journalism i try to read different newspapers every day and one of the things that i have seen is that when there is a particular story i feel like you don't have a follow-through with the same journalist even if the particular publication runs another story about it a couple of weeks later. It's often by a different writer. And I'm not sure that there are advantages to that. I like the idea that somebody that brought you the initial reporting sticks with the story. And particularly if it's a story that's going to last years, it's good that you're comfortable that somebody is aware of how the particular issue has shifted during that time period. But one of the problems I saw in a case I handled is somebody would be very interested in writing a story about it. You would invest a lot of time in trying to share and educate what you knew about the situation, but you'd never see that journalist again. It'd be a new person that came along and they'd give you a call and they'd ask you, hey, you know, I'm going to write a story about this case. Can you tell me about this issue? And it always felt like, wow, I've got to just start from the beginning all over again. I think we have a long way to go to get enough outlets telling the truth so the people can make informed decisions. I think people themselves have to demand the truth. They have to start supporting and subscribing to the outlets that they feel are telling the truth. Well, it's kind of, it's both maddening and exciting at the same time, right? Because all of the voices that didn't have an opportunity now do, of course, with the Internet, and everybody has a substack and a million podcasts. So in some ways, like this, and so in some ways, it's a marvelous time for journalists. It's a marvelous time for voices to percolate up. And at the same time, now, now that this has happened, there's so much competition for our time. I don't know about you, but there's so many podcasts, so many, I've listened to so many sub-stacks I want to read, shows I want to watch. First, we've heard how they see the state of journalism in the U.S. these days. Next, we wanted to know what they're working on right now. My name is Michael Olson. I'm a host for China Now. I guess what it gets right down to, I'm a storyteller, author. As a matter of fact, I just finished a book project that I've been working on for 30 years. And it is an oral history of World War II, as told by the officers and men, 50 of the officers and men of the USS Dale, a destroyer with 12 full battle stars. So, from beginning to end, World War II in the Pacific. Wow. And the audio book I just finished yesterday, it has 50 different voices in it. Oh, it's their voices telling their story, the actual people who are there. Wow. Yeah. And tell us more about your work. You co-host China Now, right? Yes, I co-host a show we call China Now with Nansu. Nansu and I just finished our 303rd show. Yeah. So every week we take the news of the week that relates to China and the United States, and we put the news items on the table and say, well, what does it mean? And then we have a good give and take with each other. Sometimes we agree, not always, which makes it interesting. Who's more of the expert? What about equal experts? Well, we go head to head. So I would say Nansu is probably more of an expert than I. But I love challenging him, too. I want to ask you, what are you working on next? I know you're an entrepreneur, venture capitalist. What is the latest things that you're excited about? Well, this is a good week in that way because, you know, I haven't done a new deal as an investor for 15 months. But I right now have term sheets and negotiations on two different companies. And I can't say much. Well, everything has AI in the background, but they're not AI front. One is actually a robotics and hardware-based company. And the other is, I would say, dual use personal security, next generation, maybe I could go so far as to say next generation background checks for anything from you deciding, you know, finding out, hey, my daughter comes to me, I'm dating this guy, I'm really excited, maybe I want to know a little bit more, to employment, to companies like an Airbnb or an Uber that want to actually get some intel on the people that they're entrusting other people to because, you know, some of those folks turn out to not be so great and there's bunch of issues these days with that so i'm fascinated with how that can evolve that was brought to me by a great trusted partner who's had a vision of this being something for a very long time one of the things about venture is that some of the best investments are where someone really has what would be termed the prepared mind where they have a thesis or point of view in something they really dug in deep and they see a reason why it needs to be and i'm sort of riding his prepared mind on this one for a lot of it now please tell us what is it that you're working on right now oh thank you very much passionate about many things thank you very much i just uh published i'm gonna about to publish my book it's called when the impunity it's only in spanish for now it's a very nice story i was about to self-publish it but the biggest spanish speaking group el grupo planeta in spain gave me a certification it's It's called Programa Maestría, and now we're going to work together to put it in more than 4,600 bookstores all over the planet. With them, it's going to be translated, so it slowed down my intention of publishing it fast, but now it's going to receive much more coverage. Briefly, what is the book about? This book is an effort to reach people, common readers, and understand why a country like Colombia had, after four decades of complicit association between politicians and bureaucrats, yet unpunished heinous criminals like Gustavo Petro reached the presidency and the biggest cartel masters of the FARC reached the Colombian Congress. It's not because they are very intelligent, because they are very wise, because they are very strategic. No, it's because politicians and bureaucrats in Colombia have been shamefully violating the laws, not only Colombian, but international laws. I've been doing this work since February 2018. It's more than eight years, more than 24,000 hours of investigating, of writing, of denouncing, of filing complaints in countries of four continents. Now, in terms of what you're working on, what are the things you're working on right now? What I'm working on right now is just really trying to help property owners in the Bay Area, especially Oakland, find some level of fairness and freedom. Right now, they're just being overly taxed, punished for unnecessary things. You know, some of them are just getting out of the marketplace because they feel like their property is being taken from them through taxation and just harsh penalties from local governments right now. so in terms of improving affordable housing you have to have a healthy landlord pool of people who want to invest who want to keep their properties and people who have the money to try to fix them right now a lot of the good bread and butter landlords who would normally rent to people who had marginal credit they're leaving the marketplace so when those types of landlords leave, everybody suffers. I have a client right now, older lady in her late 70s. She's been fined over in the tens of $20,000 range because of an unscrupulous tenant who I helped her evict. This lady spent over $30,000 on a tenant that she later evicted six months later and a good portion that were fines from the city of Oakland. So when you think about it, why does she want to still be a landlord if she has faced that type of taxation or punitive taxation, as I like to call it, in the city of Oakland. Now, maybe you can tell us what you're working on. And I think your office, you guys are facing a lot of challenges right now, right? Well, you know, my title is Chief Attorney in the San Francisco Public Defender Office. And so we see sort of historical trends change, you know, with ballot measures and different elected officials. In San Francisco, we're seeing an approach to try to make more arrests to deal with some of the street conditions, whether it's narcotic sales or whatever the crime might be. And we totally respect that chief of police or district attorney or a mayor may want to set these priorities or want to do things differently. But the challenge that we're up against is trying to get City Hall to give us resources to deal with what we're calling downstream consequences of having those priorities. You know, you can't give us hundreds of more cases and expect that the same number of lawyers can do all those cases. And so, yeah, it's kind of a battle of resources that we're trying to remind folks that hey if you prioritize those things you know there are other impacts and what are you working right now on what what type of things are you working on i am running Free Now Foundation where California is leading medical freedom law non-profit and we are trying to solve this issue of mandates in California children have to go to school in California with more than 30 doses of 10 vaccines if they're missing one dose of any vaccine they cannot go to school here. And how does that differ from the rest of the country? We have a lot more doses, right? Can you tell us about that? I think the doses might be similar, but in California, we have no exemptions. There's a medical exemption on the books, but it doesn't function. In fact, we believe it was designed to fail. So if somebody finally gets a medical exemption from a medical doctor, which is almost impossible because medical doctors have to write them under penalty of perjury and they risk losing their license or even going to jail if the public health department finds that the exemption doesn't meet their standard, then that exemption, if it's accepted, it goes into the database called CARE-ME, California Immunization Registry. And then our Department of Public Health looks at it and has overturned almost every single medical exemption we know of. So there is no way to get out of vaccination for your children to go to school in California, even if your child is previously injured by a vaccine. And is it just the public schools or is it all schools? It's public school and private school and religious schools. The only way out is to homeschool or leave the state, both of which carry huge costs for the entire family. If it's homeschooling, one parent has to give up their income usually to handle the homeschooling. And if you leave the state, you've got to leave your family. You have to leave your friends. You have to uproot. You have to leave your job and get a job in a different state. None of the options are easy on families. Please tell us what are you working on? What's your current project? Thank you. Well, the 10th anniversary edition of my book, Habits of a Happy brain is coming out next week and it has a new chapter on technology and happiness so it's reprinted you haven't it's reprinted but they wanted me to write something new and they wanted me to write about what are people most interested in regard to happiness today so i knew that it had to be technology but i really do not agree with the prevailing view so it's really a different view so people have learned to blame their unhappiness on whatever is the latest trendy theory. And at my age, I've lived through so many trendy theories. So needless to say, at this moment, every bad thing, both for yourself and your children, is blamed on technology. We all know whether it's social media or AI or the screen itself, that nobody looks to deeper causes of things. And everybody believes this. And then you lose agency, you lose responsibility for directing your brain in the direction you want to go you just blame some corporation which is really communism that has indoctrinated people that no matter what's wrong in your life some corporation yeah it's the food processing companies the media companies the pharmaceutical companies it's always a company so that if we get rid of companies then we'll all be happy all the time that's what people are being taught tell us more about that so what what are you saying in in your book yes so because a brain is wired by rewards and repetition so each of us has the agency to create our own reward structure so if i reward myself for doing things that i want to do and i do that repeatedly i will wire my brain and then i'll do that so a simple example would be i decide that i'm going to use social media for 10 minutes and after 10 minutes I stop and do something else, for example. So everyone is capable of that and it's a moderation that you can choose yourself rather than feeling like it's forced on you. And you can celebrate your ability to do that. Like I can have a pint of ice cream in my freezer because I know that I'll just eat two spoons a day, for example. So each of us needs to understand how our brain works and then understand that we can build new pathways but it's very hard and it takes work so maybe in a few more sentences how do you do that yeah so um interestingly i love to learn from animal trainers because they're the ones that have this figured out you create a tiny step and you give yourself a reward for that tiny step and you do it every day and it's hard because you have to make the rewards relatively healthy and relatively small and you have to make the steps small enough that you can achieve it and get the reward because that's what triggers the dopamine and the dopamine paves the new pathway that says moderation feels good because it's going to lead me to a better reward when I learn to do that now please tell me what are you working on now what is what What is exciting for you in your job? And I would assume, I'll take a guess, but is meeting all these amazing guests that you bring in every month. Yeah. Meeting them is fun, but what's more fun is championing their messages, right? Because frankly, I've lived in freedom, and my personal goal in doing this is to pass the baton of liberty onto the next generation. That's why I spend my time in efforting for the Liberty Forum. And we are the largest Liberty-focused speaker series on the West Coast. And we punch way above our weight with our speakers. We have amazing people, and each of them brings the voice of Liberty to kind of the belly of the tech beast, right? People like to come here because there's so much happening here in terms of innovation. But we also know on the other side, there's also so much central control that comes through technology now. So my passion is passing that baton on. And, yeah, I absolutely love sharing these voices of freedom with Silicon Valley. People say the great companies start from basement. AppTimes actually started in year 2000 in the basement in Atlanta, Georgia. So we had a very simple idea to bring truthful and uncensored information into and out of China. Year 2003, there was a SARS pandemic. It broke out first in China and then spread around the world, mainly largely actually caused by the censorship in China. The Epoch Times and NTD reported the story weeks before Beijing admitted the problem. So I learned that a high school in the United States, a high school that had planned to send their students to China, after seeing our reporting, they postponed their trips. Later on, they told us that how grateful they are for having this kind of a critical information, have access to this critical information in time. Actually, we have reported the truth about China. And also from day one, the Chinese Communist Party has tried every means at their disposal to silence us. economic coercion, political pressure, life threats, lawfare, media attacks, and more. So at this time, the Epoch Times and NTD are the most feared media outlets by the CCP. But despite all this, Epoch Times and NTD has continued to grow from just a handful of volunteers into an international media organization. Today, the Epoch Times NTD produced national and international news, investigative reports, documentaries, and many other original programs. The Epoch Times actually has become the fourth largest subscription newspaper in the United States. So I really want to thank our subscribers and supporters, people like you. We would never have been able to come this far without your trust and your support. Every article read, every story shared, every subscription, and every act of support helped choose which one more person, one more family, and one more community. It is my belief that as long as there are people like you who care about truth, care about courage, and care about human dignity, this mission will continue. Thank you and enjoy the event. And before we wrap up, we ask one more question, this time about us. What do you think of Epoch Times? Have you had any experience with us, with our reporting? Well, I've always had good relations with Epoch. I like the journalism. You know, I'm more familiar with the interview programs that you've done, and it's one of the reasons why I'm here. I heard CMC was going to be in Northern California, and it was hard to believe, so I wanted to see it for myself. But seriously, I've liked the interview journalism you've done. I think that you give your guests an opportunity to say what they want to say. You ask questions that show that you're familiar with the issue and you're listening to them. And at the end of the day, I think you provide an opportunity for the listener, not just to automatically agree with your guests, but to have a path to be educated and make their own decisions. My head is getting big. I might not fit in this room. I'm being truthful I mean I don't I don't need to be here and I don't need to you know be interviewed about anything frankly but but I do think that sets you apart any feedback for us for the Epoch Times well yeah I really appreciate the Epoch Times for not being so polarized and not focusing so much of its content on bashing the other side and for separating fact and opinion and so I don't just have to read. And, you know, when they say, you know, what you need to know about something that's going to happen tomorrow, they clearly label it as that, and so then I'm happy to read that. Yeah, and my work is about how the mind works, and repetition is very much what wires us. And so when you repeat that to yourself constantly, you perceive yourself being in a world of threat much more than you really are. Yes. I find the Epoch Times to be a fair and balanced newspaper. Surprisingly so, as a matter of fact. And I also enjoy a lot of the non-political features that it has. So it's one of the two newspapers I still subscribe to. Epoch Times has been good because they give you a forum to really tell the truth about what's going on. They give you a chance to really practice what the First Amendment is all about, which is hey this is unfair this is this is mistreatment this is a violation of the constitution you really get that out of their out of their um media you don't get that out of other places right now you know the Epoch Times is a bit steep maybe i'll call it a tonic when i pick up the Epoch Times i kind of know i'm going towards something that's going to be good and wholesomeness and goodness is so lacking in our world right now and maybe that sounds a little Pollyanna but that's truly how I feel about the Epoch Times. It just, it's going to not just tell me the news of the day, but it's not going to put, certainly it's not going to put a communist spin on things, but it's also going to include what's fundamental for life, why we want to be here, beauty, what is sacred, whether that's one religion or another, but what kind of elevates us as human beings. So the tone of the Epoch Times is something I look forward to, as well the content it's a group that you're comfortable partnering with because there's a trust i guess that's maybe the word i think you can trust the products when we started Bay Area Innovators the idea was simple find the people shaping this region and let them tell their stories in their own words seeing so many of them together and chatting with them today was a reminder of why we do this Thank you for joining us. This is Stephen Spas, and we'll see you next time on Bay Area Innovators. Thank you for watching another episode of Bay Area Innovators. If you enjoyed this episode and you know someone who should be on our show, please send us an email at [email protected]. We would love to hear from you. Thank you and see you next week.