Catherine Herridge
How X And Joe Rogan Broke The Back of 60 Minutes
| TOP LINE: | |||||||||||||||
| Super consumers of news are flocking to X and other platforms that support independent journalism, diverse voices and embrace transparency. The post election TV ratings abyss is driven both by technology and by the public’s loss of trust in Mainstream media. | |||||||||||||||
| DEEP DIVE: | |||||||||||||||
| To buy MSNBC or not to buy? | |||||||||||||||
| This week’s headline that Comcast will spin off its cable channels underscores the tectonic shift in the media marketplace and how technology is providing the exit ramp for competing platforms. | |||||||||||||||
| When my job as a senior investigative correspondent at CBS News was terminated in February, I took a few months to educate myself about the marketplace because so much had changed since I left Fox in 2019. What I found was genuinely surprising, a little frightening and, oddly, re-assuring for the strength of our democracy. | |||||||||||||||
| You can’t argue with the data. It is compelling. On Election Day, according to @Xdata, the platform boasted record usage of 942 million posts worldwide and 2.2 million hours of watch or listen time over approximately 160k live events. The X data crushed engagement numbers for the mainstream media (MSM.) | |||||||||||||||
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| By example, a Tucker Carlson interview on X has 35 million engagements. The CBS Evening News has 4.5 million viewers. If I had to choose, I’d take 30 million engagements on X because it represents explosive growth. | |||||||||||||||
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| The new super consumers of news are flocking to X and other platforms that support independent journalism, diverse voices, and embrace transparency which can strengthen democracy. This is nothing short of an industrial revolution driven both by technology and by loss of trust in corporate media. | |||||||||||||||
| In 2023, Human Rights lawyer Jacob Mchangama wrote about the upheaval and resulting, “elite panic.” | |||||||||||||||
| “Elite panic is this recurring phenomenon throughout the history of free speech, where whenever the public sphere is expanded, either through new communications technology, or to segments of the population that were previously marginalized, the traditional gatekeepers, the elites who control access to information, tend to fret about the dangers of allowing the unwashed mob — who are too fickle, too unsophisticated, too unlearned — unmediated access to information. They need information to be filtered through the responsible gatekeepers and it may be even more dangerous to allow them to speak without adult supervision. That’s a phenomenon that we see again and again. And we’re seeing it play out now on social media. … [Elite panic is] one contributing factor to the free speech recession.” | |||||||||||||||
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| If you asked me four years ago, if a presidential candidate could skip a 60 Minutes interview, I would have been skeptical. Four years later, candidate Trump bypassed the legacy news magazine and instead, sat down with Joe Rogan. As of this writing, the marathon sit-down viewership reached 51 million views. | |||||||||||||||
| There is no doubt Rogan is a skilled interviewer who can draw out his subjects and deliver huge audiences. Compared to heavily edited network TV reports, the raw, unedited format reveals much about the subject. In politics, the podcast is perfectly suited for the “beer question” which measures a candidate’s authenticity and likability. | |||||||||||||||
| The progressive Harris campaign took a more traditional media approach and came up short. Neither celebrity endorsements which feel less relevant nor a 60 Minutes interview seemed to move the needle. The combined audience of the 60 Minutes Kamala Harris interview and its views on YouTube landed at about 10 million, far less than what Rogan and X delivered. | |||||||||||||||
| The legacy of the Kamala Harris 60 Minutes interview is not her responses but the lingering controversy over the CBS’ interview edit. And that is where the public’s loss of trust in the media comes in. I believe this is another driver of the audience exodus. | |||||||||||||||
| CBS aired two different answers from the Vice President to the same question from correspondent Bill Whitaker about the Israeli Prime Minister apparently ignoring the Biden Administration. | |||||||||||||||
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| Since, a credible complaint has been filed at the FCC alleging “news distortion” at the network with a reasonable demand that the full, unedited Kamala Harris transcript be released. CBS News has said “it fairly presented the interview to inform the viewing audience and not to mislead it.” | |||||||||||||||
| In the October newsletter, I explained that releasing the full, unedited transcript would resolve these questions. There is ample precedent. | |||||||||||||||
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| As a senior investigative correspondent at CBS News, I interviewed President Trump at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. I advocated for and CBS News published the full, unedited transcript. | |||||||||||||||
| The CBS News Trump interview was not a special case. The full, unedited transcript from Attorney General Bill Barr’s 2019 interview with CBS chief legal affairs correspondent Jan Crawford was also shared by the network. And more recently, 60 Minutes released the full unedited transcript of its interview with Fed Chair Jerome Powell. | |||||||||||||||
| If the current trend continues, in the 2028 election cycle, the broadcast networks will firmly take a back seat to podcasts, town halls, and investigative journalism on X. For independent journalists and small digital newsrooms, the challenge is developing revenue streams that are viable. | |||||||||||||||
| In February, I was not comforted by the analogy that losing my corporate reporting job was like getting pushed off the Titanic when there were still seats in the lifeboats. In retrospect, I wonder if it may turn out to be more accurate than I initially thought. | |||||||||||||||
| After turning down job offers for which I remain grateful, I began building the Catherine Herridge Reports brand on X and in the newsletter marketplace. These platforms are the new media beachheads. Content is King. | |||||||||||||||
| I’ll have more to say about the future of journalism and why journalism is called a profession for a reason. Look for exclusive new content on media accountability in the coming days! | |||||||||||||||
| Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter and supporting independent investigative journalism! |
| On the eve of Inauguration Day, the time is right to share my personal story about the “Diet Coke” button. | ||
| DEEP DIVE | ||
| It is a privilege and a tremendous opportunity for a reporter to interview the Commander in Chief. Any journalist who tells you otherwise is bitter because they can’t land the big interview. | ||
| I have sat down with President Trump twice. First at Fox News, after the Special Counsel Robert Mueller report was released. The second time, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a senior investigative correspondent for CBS News. | ||
| In advance of interviewing President Trump, I was invited to an informal meeting at the White House. The Oval Office appointment had the tone of a “get to know you session.” | ||
| While the meeting was “off the record,” I can tell you that it wasn’t about setting limits on an interview or providing questions which would cross a journalistic redline. I understood from President Trump’s press team that he made the final call on which reporter would conduct the interview. | ||
| Sitting across from President Trump, I noticed a red button on the Resolute Desk and my imagination ran wild. “What was it, a nuclear button, a panic button, or a get this reporter out of here button?”’ | ||
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| I was not the first person to fall into this trap. In his book, “The Chief’s Chief,” former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows described his encounter with the Diet Coke button, writing it “seemed like something you might use to launch a nuclear missile, or maybe to order SEAL Team Six into action.” | ||
| “I braced for whatever sonic boom, breaking glass, or cloud of smoke I assumed was coming,” Meadows added. | ||
| With a keen eye, President Trump saw my curiosity, and leveraged it. He leaned across the desk, and in what seemed a very deliberate manner, he pressed the red button. I nearly jumped out of my seat. | ||
| Then to my right, I recall that a butler entered the Oval Office with a silver tray and several tall glasses of Diet Coke. I can’t recall exactly, and it may have been the shock of the red button, but the butler seemed to appear out of nowhere from behind the bookcases. | ||
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| I recall President Trump put his hand next to his mouth, and whispered, “It’s one of the best parts of the job!” | ||
| Out of respect for the ground rules, I am not going to say much more about the meeting because it was off the record. As we concluded, President Trump asked if I had ever seen the Lincoln bedroom which, of course, I had not. Then he made some quip about the Clintons and you can fill in the rest. | ||
| The CBS interview went ahead in July 2020 in the Rose Garden because of COVID-19 restrictions. The questions were direct. One in particular he described as “a terrible question to ask,” but President Trump still answered each query. With my urging, CBS News released the full, unedited transcript. | ||
| Bear that precedent in mind as you consider the lingering controversy over the 60 Minutes Kamala Harris edit. |
Subscribe to Catherine Herridge Reports
| TOP LINE: | ||||||||
| A seasoned law enforcement contact believes the FBI’s pipe bomber probe is “absolutely a cold case,” and the newly released video footage and details about the suspect are part of the bureau’s “tickle the wire” approach to generate new leads. | ||||||||
| The story of January 6th will never be fully understood until the pipe bomber is identified and their motive revealed. | ||||||||
| DEEP DIVE: | ||||||||
| This week, the FBI released new details and previously unseen video footage of its high priority suspect. I write ‘high priority’ because the reward, of up to $500k, is the kind of reward typically associated with global terrorist networks. | ||||||||
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| The timeline is well documented. | ||||||||
| On the evening of January 5th 2021, sometime between 7:30 and 8:30 pm, the suspect planted two viable pipe bombs. One device was left near a bench outside the Democratic National Committee (DNC) office and a second device was planted in an alleyway behind the Republican National Committee (RNC) office. Both locations are a few short blocks from the U.S. Capitol building. | ||||||||
| “When investigators lack leads or want to ‘tickle the wire,’ they may use things like crime anniversaries..to help get them fresh leads,” Scott Sweetow, a retired ATF and former acting Director of the FBI’s Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center, explained. | ||||||||
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| Over the years, I have discussed the case with Sweetow and others. Some of the newly released information struck both of us as probably not ‘new’ to investigators. | ||||||||
| The FBI estimates the pipe bomber’s height at 5’7”. Having convered the FBI since 9/11, it’s the kind of basic information I would expect investigators to immediately release. Asked if the FBI sat on the details, Sweetow said it also struck him as odd. | ||||||||
| “Typically, in any investigation, you want to get maximum information out to the public to spur leads as opposed to waiting,” Sweetow said. “If there is particularly sensitive information which cannot be released, sometimes it is a tactical decision to withhold that, but given the length of time that has passed since the attempted bombings, it really made little investigative sense to hold back information like this for as long as they did.” | ||||||||
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| I was among the first journalists to report on the pipe bombs. Three days after the pipe bombs were discovered, I obtained this law enforcement bulletin that raised questions about the bomber’s timing and motive. | ||||||||
| The choice of the RNC and DNC had obvious political overtones. According to the law enforcement records, the RNC device was reported at approximately 12:45 pm eastern on January 6th in the alley, wedged next to a garbage bin. The DNC device was found a half hour later, at approximately 13:15 pm eastern, in the bushes outside the building. | ||||||||
| Both devices were planted in lightly trafficked areas, suggesting the pipe bomber’s goal was to attract attention and not to inflict the greatest number of casualties. | ||||||||
| In March 2021, I reviewed a second law enforcement report that summarized the FBI lab’s forensic report. A key finding: both devices relied on mechanical kitchen timers. | ||||||||
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| The Task Force report read, “…the forensic examination of a pipe bomb (device 1) indicated the device contained a powdery substance consistent with the oxidizer potassium nitrate, the fuel sulfur, and a fuel consistent with charcoal. A second pipe bomb (device 2) contained the low explosive black powder which consisted of the oxidizer potassium nitrate, the fuel sulphur and a fuel consistent with charcoal….Both devices’ switches consisted of a generic kitchen timer.” | ||||||||
| “A wire ran from the zero side of the timer to the positive side of the 9-volt snap connector on device 1. The igniters on both devices consisted of one piece of steel wool with two alligator clips.” | ||||||||
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| The pipe bombs had some sophistication, combining a mechanical timer and electrical ignition system. There was no secondary means of detonating the devices. My contacts report most pipe bombs recovered in the US have a simpler design. | ||||||||
| When you are investigating a story, there is no substitute for going to the scene, and getting as close to the evidence as possible. With some research, and the help of long time contacts, I purchased a similar kitchen timer (above.) | ||||||||
| I was struck by a flaw that is apparently well known to bomb techs. The 60 minute timers depend on the mechanical energy of a spring. If they are not properly wound, the electrical circuit will not be completed and the device will malfunction. | ||||||||
| While the photos are grainy, it appears at least one timer may have stopped short of “zero,” but it’s hard to say for sure. | ||||||||
| All of this suggests the pipe bombs may have been designed to explode on January 5th. An explosion that night, hours before the Certification of Electoral Votes, would have fundamentally changed Capitol Hill’s security posture. | ||||||||
| “Washington DC would have been locked down in a way few people have encountered, and substantial resources would have been marshaled due to the concern of additional attacks. Had this occurred, it is highly unlikely the subsequent events of January 6th could have occurred, as the capital would likely have been severely locked down,” Sweetow explained. | ||||||||
| While the bomb maker(s) may not have understood the potential flaw inherent in the use of kitchen timers, the apparent lack of DNA evidence suggests the bomb maker was not an amateur. | ||||||||
| “This is absolutely a cold case. In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, the FBI threw massive resources at the case, which is certainly understandable given the political nature of the targets and the location being Washington DC,” Sweetow emphasized. “The lack of forensic evidence in this case is highly unusual, and one of the most problematic things facing investigators.” | ||||||||
| Aside from the newly released details from the FBI about the bomber’s height and distinctive sneakers, security videos from the street reveal another clue. Almost as unique as DNA, it’s called “gait analysis”. | ||||||||
| Gait analysis is the way a person walks, their mannerisms, how they carry themselves. It can be a very powerful investigative tool. Military and law enforcement sources tell me they use gait analysis to help identify targets in the field. | ||||||||
| “I have long felt that the mannerisms of the suspect, to include their gait, the way they bent over multiple times, and generally carried themselves was highly suggestive of a female,” Sweetow said. His analysis was backed up by a second contact, a retired Special Forces officer. | ||||||||
| It is hard to reconcile the known facts in the pipe bomber case. Massive resources were expended by the FBI, but no suspect(s) have been publicly identified. The suspect seen in the videos may not be the bomb maker and, in fact, investigators maybe looking for a small cell. | ||||||||
| While the bomb maker may have been tripped up by the kitchen timers, they were expert enough to apparently avoid leaving significant DNA evidence. | ||||||||
| And lastly, the motive may have been distraction after a contentious election, not an explosion with significant casualties. | ||||||||
| “Sometimes you never actually discover what the intent is of a bomber,” Sweetow said in closing. “The choice of political targets, following a very contentious election and impending congressional certification implies a political motive for the bomber. Because of that, it is possible the suspect wanted to cause general chaos in the National Capital Region in the hopes of eliciting some sort of action, although what that action was is difficult to say.” | ||||||||
| This is a worthy case for the next FBI Director. | ||||||||
| For its part, according to the AP, the FBI “has assessed over 600 tips, reviewed about 39,000 video files and conducted more than 1,000 interviews over the past four years.” | ||||||||
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Best, Catherine |
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