Mike Papantonio & Sam Seder talk about how mainstream media has become corporate media, and the importance a new TV show like “America’s Lawyer” will have.
Transcription of the above video:
Seder:
Pap, one of the things I’ve been wanting to talk to you about and it is obviously not just peripheral but it’s right on point with a lot of the things that we talk about on this program. Obviously, a lot of the things that you do on a day-to-day basis, whether it’s holding chemical companies accountable for their dumping their chemicals in our water, or medical makers responsible for putting out products that they haven’t tested well enough for safety, is the launch of your new TV show.
Papantonio:
Yes. America’s Lawyer, it is going to be launching just a couple of weeks with RT America and it’ll show also with RT International. I think it’s going to show in every english-speaking country in the world, 70 million people. The reason that it’s so important, Sam, is because as we’ve said … You and I have talked about so many times, corporate media in the US is virtually dead. The chances of corporate media of telling these stories are not just existent.
If you turn on the television tonight and you watch the nightly news, in that hour of nightly news you’re going to see an average of seven pharmaceutical advertisements. The problem with that is when you’ve got advertisers like Pfizer, and Merck, and Bayer, and Johnson & Johnson. When you have all these advertisers that you’re counting on for all of your money just so the CEO can make big bonuses, you’re not going to run stories that talk about a pharmaceutical that might be killing people by the thousands all over the country, and in fact, all over the world, so the stories don’t get told.
With RT America, part of the agreement for me to do the story is that I got to be able to tell the stories. If it’s oil and gas company that’s polluting a river, I got to tell stories like DuPont basically just thrashing the Ohio river. With RT America I’m able to do that. It’s a very different program. I got to tell you, there’s not another duplicate of it anywhere.
You can’t watch CNN and listen to that character, whatever his name is, the CNN … I can’t [remember 00:02:27] his name right now but is their in-house lawyer. He doesn’t have the ability to tell stories like this, he’s not even a trial lawyer so he doesn’t have stories like this. Certainly, his network would not even allow him to tell those stories. It’s a very different product, there won’t be another one like it.
Seder:
It’s impossible to imagine it. I mean for a couple of reasons. One as you say … If there’s any doubt, and I don’t know why people would necessarily have any doubt about it, but if there was any doubt that these advertisers, I mean you can just look to something even like a small … There was a big scandal about VICE maybe about a year, year and a half ago, that VICE was actually changing their coverage of the NFL because they were hoping to do some type of program with the NFL in the future. This is the way these news outfits are just part of a larger entertainment package. They exist to make money, and they don’t want to offend their primary customer which is this big corporate, many times, [manufacturing 00:03:46].
Papantonio:
Sam, it’s amazing. Here, again, this is a program that will show to 70 million people, every english-speaking country in the world will hear America’s Lawyer, and they’re going to be hearing form the lawyers that actually have the big pharmaceutical cases. We’ll be hearing from the clients that have suffered because of whatever that pharmaceutical company did. We’re going to hear from the best environmental lawyers in the world talking about a company thrashing a major waterway.
Those are not stories that you will ever hear from corporate media. The advantage I have is, A, we’ve reached out to lawyers all over the country and said, “Look, if you have filed a case, the only stipulation is the case has got to be filed, and we have to be supplied documents, and we have to be able to talk to a clients.” The show will focus on that case for about the first half of the show, and then we’ll be talking about kind of a diverse bunch of issues dealing with the law.
I think the importance of America’s Lawyer is, when I tell you there will not be another show like it, I promise you that will be the case. When we talk about the talc case of Johnson & Johnson and how Johnson & Johnson knew about the dangers of their powder decades ago, and how they intentionally covered it up. We’re not just going to say it, we’ll actually have the documents up on the screen where we show you that, and we’ll have the lawyer who actually tried the cases against Johnson & Johnson on the show. It’s a very different product.
Seder:
I got to say, one of my special request too is that I think so little attention, particularly on the left is paid to the supreme court, but also particularly even beyond that, as a subset of things that are ignored in terms of the court is the question of how the court … Even in this instance, the four five split that we’ve seen for years is often far greater when it comes to barring access to the courtroom. Is this a topic that you guys will be talking about?
Papantonio:
Yes.
Seder:
Because again, these are topics that we hear nowhere else.
Papantonio:
It’s impossible to talk about a legal story now without involving the back story, dealing with the Chamber of Commerce, or associated industries, or ALEC. It’s impossible to tell these stories without showing what lengths these organizations are going to so these stories are never told. As a matter of fact, RT America, as soon as we start doing theses stories is just going to be covered up with lobbyist calling about how dare you.
The difficulty is RT has the guts to say, “You know what, this is what we’re gonna do. We don’t get money from your advertising, we think the story is important and we’re gonna run it anyway.” That’s the commitment I got from RT America and RT International to do the show. When they show it in every english-speaking country in the world, sometimes it’s going to be showing right in the back yard of a company that might be manufacturing the product. The politics really come home to roost right there in their back yard.
I’m a trial lawyer, I’ve spent countless hours pouring through documents to tell the story about the ugly side of corporate America. Corporate media refuses to talk about these issues. I’m going to paint a clear picture about how disturbing, how corrupt corporate conduct has become in modern America. These are stories that no one else can tell. I’m Mike Papantonio, host of America’s Lawyer. Question more.
We’re uncovering stories everyday on America’s Lawyer that nobody is talking about. If you have a case that you want us to talk about, get in touch.
