well get ready for a dose of reality. everybody knows that france is no longer aaa everybody knows that italy is no longer as highly rated as it used to be the market knows all of this apparently standard and poor's credit rating agency didn't know until just last weekend and in spite of the downgrade european markets are starting the week off strong author an investor jim rogers will walk us through the ratings rollercoaster. good afternoon it is monday january sixteenth four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for you watching our team. well some dots today on the state of journalism in america things are changing of course with the addition of facebook and twitter vehicles that make it so the news is reported as it happens and it's not just people typing up what they're seeing there are photos and videos attached

so you can see it too from revolution on the streets of egypt to colonel moammar gadhafi is a brutal beating on camera for the world to see cell phone videos capturing every gaffe of every presidential candidate every campaign stop here in the u.s. is hard to argue that we're not much more well informed now especially when it comes to knowing what's happening not just in our own neighborhoods but around the world i think this is important but it's also important to note some other changes taking place in terms of the way you get your news it turns out getting it first and getting it right is no longer even enough for the associated press after one hundred sixty five years the a.p. has decided to change its format no longer will they just be laying out the facts they'll now be connecting the dots for you the reader the viewer with more analysis here's a snippet from an internal memo circulating at the a.p. . says quote we're going to be pushing hard on journalism with voice with context with more interpretations this does not mean we're sacrificing any of our deep

commitment to the unbiased fair journalism does not mean that we're venturing into opinion either it does mean that we need to be looking for ways to be distinctive and stand out in the field so that says to me it's no longer just who what where but why and what does that mean or at least what do they say it means and i thought the only thing piers morgan show on c.n.n. will also change as well he told the news are that in his shows the second year he's already been on for a year if you can believe it changes to his program piers morgan tonight will include making it a bit more mysterious with more humor and more opinionated. piers morgan says he's no comedian like jon stewart will never be as partisan as bill o'reilly but he will nonetheless add humor and opinion to his show there are more changes than examples to discuss and we'll be talking about a few of them today my guest now is seton smith comedian and filmmaker in new york . hey they're saying you know as you know we've got liberal leaning networks and

publications we've got conservative ones as well i want to get your take though on why you think that some of the most objective outlets wire services for example now feel the need to change. i mean clearly it's all about ratings which is i guess that ratings for some reason is always the big i mean it's not said it's also if this is good i'm actually wondering i want to be in that meeting with a.p. i want to know there had to be one person was like hey well maybe we should just you know do our news based on standards and ethics and then they just got laughed out of the room and i mediately fired and i'm not sure that here we're going to sell us over some ratings you know like that star i feel bad for that i had that for piers can i talk about this or so i can say which one is that i was going to say probably one of the reading the reasons that internal memo is no longer internal is because there were some people who had a serious problem with it go ahead and say your piece about here's what we're going to say. but this is a major set up here because i don't know if you read the exact quote he said he wants to make his show more missed civitas it was word civitas which is just got to

say because these kind of blatantly doesn't know what date in america it is and it was placed like like bill o'reilly is you know crazy. jon stewart is you know crazy in his own way hannity is threatening to kill the president and we've got this one guy going to be more has to be a soon to call people in to miss t.v.'s he should really figure his zero point out i don't know if going to last very long with that mentality it is interesting to see all of these shows and sort of the direction you know if you know if your mom is anything like mine she probably told you all the time at least growing up to mind your manners and you know for much of my life were you watching the news that's what people did at least for the most part journalists and their interview subjects were respectful even with those they disagreed with that is not exactly the case anymore either people are just more comfortable letting loose or some sort of memo is also circulating that yelling and screaming and name calling it makes for good t.v. we put together

a couple examples so i want to play this and then we'll talk about it. if you just said that there were genuine. criminal prosecutor let's take it back here i guess a prime security problem for me is i want to ask why why no man is there i realize that james and why colleagues want to shame senator mary landrieu sometimes your positions are right but i anti-american i don't think you're anti american but certainly the far left to take an anti american citizen it is name calling let's not get anybody to agree with and for the people on the network as gary was noted how there was an editorial i don't you grasp worse and i'm get a little mad at you grasp this little counter on it you got it i hear you say no it's free so we were sitting here arguing about whether we should do the four trillion dollar plan that kicks the can down the road for the president for twenty seventeen or burn the place to the ground both of which are reckless irresponsible and stupid and seen what your tag line is boiling time for is and the name calling

on air. i love it i don't know why we got to not this having watched news in the fifty's lately it was incredibly boring you know what we need to make more all our new stuff make it like more povich that's what i want i want more povich that i want i want real issues you know i want the baby to be there's nuclear weapons you have nuclear weapons that's great no i completely support that i want to see more of that i mean yes yes nothing is getting accomplished but you know was things really getting accomplished back and what the congress was doing things while i'm getting better. and that's what i mean is certainly i'm jerry springer and its heyday where i had you know amazing ratings and i was it was a bunch of yelling fighting who knows that's going to be next maybe the next thing we see is bill o'reilly is going to throw a punch at one of his gaffes luckily that hasn't happened yet to my knowledge at least i say this yes it is you know i have noticed though that the people on if you ever watch political pundits and they you know and then you watch sports pundits and they you know it's like the same yelling except different comic one person yelling about le bron and this one person is yelling about libya and it's the same

thing they're interesting they're third people they argue about random things i know i think that's a really good point i mean there i think is the term out there that's one of my guests used the other day with me call that the e.s.p.n. ization of the news i mean it's a it's a popular model it's a model that works the sports the people that are yelling and i think it's interesting that you do see more and more of that and there's also see in the go ahead. you walk you know there's another one of a kind of question about. that's a lot of talent like a lot of people don't really for size how hard it is to you know about a debt ceiling crisis something you just put wake up out of the morning go about deaths out of. you've got to look you've got to practice it and then get on camera right i'm going to yell about you about some new shit like you like president obama appointing these recess appointments of people yelling about the system like i had to take a minute why we've met it's talent so we can applaud him on that at the very least

all right i think some good point you're making there's also seen it seems to me you know kind of a blurred line now between the news giver and the news maker and i have another example you know it's not exactly hidden at all but i think it bears showing some of the latest tweets by none other than rupert murdoch's over murdoch has been going after the white house criticizing president obama for backing down from the stop online piracy act or sopa here's a tweet from a couple days ago he said so obama has thrown in his lot with silicon valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy plain thievery so it was a time to change the architecture of the net for the sake of entertainment. certainly is very interesting when you when you see what he's going after this is his industry use part trying to protect also murdoch treated piracy leader is google who streams movies free sells advertising around them no wonder pouring millions into lobbying so you see here this is this is the media mogul rupert

murdoch who owns the fair and balanced fox news channel and also the wall street journal to name a few swimming more of the kneedeep in a policy debate your thoughts. i love anyway we can destroy a moderate in our own way but. in this sounds very punk on my part but barak scares me. because you literally he's a media mogul who controls most of the world and he also has a ninja assassin as a wife but he literally is like a. on character you know like he's you know he's really he's a scary. movie about bond was one of piers morgan's or purse bronson's one and it was a very good but still he was there so nothing there you know what about it is i mean what about this idea that sleep that the owner of you know the most successful cable news network a very successful newspaper you know is engaging in a policy debate certainly that doesn't suggest that he's telling the writers what to say or telling the anchors what to say on air about do you think you don't think it's crossing the line at all you know because i feel like of the other things he's

been accused of breaking into people's phones socks news in general to weeding is the least of his offenses up he has a ninja assassin as a wife like he just. does the least thing he's tweeting us a big that's not a big do like saddam hussein tweeting all right thank you i'll write it like you did you just go there kill less people did you just compare rupert murdoch to saddam hussein i'm sure you didn't. like it i just did but it's better the complete comparing him to hitler i think i'm a saddam hussein at least current ok there you go would love to talk to you more certainly lots of interesting stuff unfortunately we're out of time comedian and filmmaker as seen smith in new york city. well speaking of a lack of civility in journalism i want to take this time just briefly to address something we told you about last week radio host and paid c.n.n. contributor dana lash agreeing with those marines in afghanistan remember the ones caught on video urinating on dead militants on

a radio show last week dana said that she dropped trial and do it too those are her words but when our team put a link from the audio from her show on to our web site she tweeted us and accused us of not doing our job of gathering news and spinning what she said even though we simply posted the audio from her show her words she also said we didn't reach out to her which we actually did using several different methods and she never responded oh she did tweet back a few times also right words website big journalism which is the editor in chief she attacked our team calling it a quote propaganda effort controlled completely by the kremlin she also tweeted at our web team asking if putin had helped craft their tweets oh sorry miss lash we were going through inform you that no prime minister putin was not involved in the crafting of our own news articles on the contrary here at r t we try to bring the news by offering accounts of actual events that impacts the world by mocking them and humiliating the unfortunate for shock value perhaps that big journalism they do

journalism a bit differently but here at r t we don't rely on shock nor do we need putin's or pundits to bring the news just wanted to let you know. what was the eternal sunshine of the military mind as the pentagon approves the study of a pill designed to make soldiers forget the horrors of war we ask the question is ignorance really bliss. just burned your eyes right i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essentially was much stronger than anything in the bio i was a. thousands of times were stronger than any kind of ever put you know. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something

else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome pacific ocean. all right let's talk about a reality of our time that's most likely been a reality for decades if not centuries but it's one that's starting finally to not be ignored i'm talking about post-traumatic stress syndrome. disorder and perhaps it was simply because it couldn't be ignored any longer i want to give you some numbers here twenty percent of soldiers who have been deployed in the past six years have p.t.s.d. that's more than three hundred thousand people now in two thousand and the number diagnosed diagnosed cases in the u.s. military jumped fifty percent and that's just the cases that are diagnosed and finally the lifetime prevalence of p.t.s.d.

in combat veterans is ten to thirty percent so it stays with them forever now the pentagon has announced now eleven million dollar grant to study the effect of is that effect of miss of a new drug d.c.i. klosterman or d.c.s. it's believed to help get rid of fearful memories all right so here's how the study works a total of three hundred patients all of them veterans from iraq and afghanistan will take part in seven individual weekly sessions involving exposure therapy actually revisiting those traumatic experiences and taking a pill d.c.s. and how to get a placebo and experts at different universities emory the university of southern california and new york presbyterian weill cornell medical center will study the effects but we want to talk about some of the other facts namely what will the results be if this drug actually works and with me now for more blogger and truthout contributor dr jeff. hey there dr kay what do you see

as some of the other implications that aren't really being talked about in terms of what is essentially a memory or racing pill in this effort to take the trauma out of war. well they wish they could have a memory or reason but there really will be ministers. this drug which is called be thankless arena would be as it is tuberculosis drug and is one of the get the latest in a series of different drugs that the military but also medical researchers have been looking for to try and find an effective treatment proposed dramatic stress disorder which is an awful awful disorder to have and it's no surprise that the american military in its quest to you know i mean all over the world are seeing hundreds of thousands of cases interactive game of c.m. elsewhere and if they really you know the military would like to have soldiers who

couldn't. react to the horrors of war but unfortunately that's not reportedly depending how you look at it that's not going to happen if same story that this is just another example of you know what some people call the pharmaceutical industrial complex you know trying to put forth a pill and first having this eleven million dollars to study at the put forth a pill that can solve everything. right well this bill what they want to do is use it is an add on to. exposure and response treatment for p.t.s.d. . the studies that were done just last year in two thousand and two with the same drug showed that it was not a factor that studies them on free will in boston harbor and yet the military is going to put out a living million dollars to study the kind of in the industry. of course p.t.s.d. can happen for reasons other than combat is not as if it were not

a real accident people who are great people who are victims of violent crimes the truth is it would be a great move to humanity if some medication were found that could truly help people who suffer the p.s.v. but it's a stream we let's get through physical physiological condition the brain does not respond simply to be in the sierras and the sad but this article true is that terrible things happen begin with beings they are truly affected by the military think that it can develop a drug mind a drug which will take the terror out of war and then they're really insane. i mean i know and just for just for the sake of discussion i know i'm sure you've seen that this video that's been circulating around of soldiers or marines actually urinating on the dead bodies in afghanistan just when you think about yourself dr kay you know having to separate yourself from your own emotions in

a human eyes in your enemy just in order to make it through the day. it's no wonder there is no red flag for some of these military personnel because they say they really have to do this and so i'm wondering. you know do you think that this will just make things worse in terms of more things like this happening we're showing the video right now of this and if they have soldiers and the future and marines are able to you know forget about it how do we know that it won't happen more more and. right well that's the question what if you've created a super warrior who had. you know what type of. terrible things would could you do with them in warfare what those soldiers showed with the euro nations and the desecration of corpses this is something has happened in warfare going back thousands of years in fact the first the iliad which is the beginning of western literature the primary event that occurs in the claimant's of

that great epic poem the desecration of the birds affected by achilles in the order that it brings in everyone who watches them go through this madness because in fact war isn't it isn't it reduces madness in the people who engages. it's. you know rather than looking for ways to. ways to serve accomplish without work there instead we have a militarist the government who is injecting american military troops around the world and they have a serious problem because they're getting injured they're getting very seriously injured just in their bodies we're losing limbs but they're very souls are being into their psyches and there are they keep looking for ways to solve the problem but there is no solution there are. we need to do is to find a way to stop the motorist policies of the united states and brotherhood groups as

well. and because that's how you're going to actually bring down the not true you know some magic drove that's going to be accomplished i mean and you said yourself and i read that this drug whether it works or not will be used alongside as an adjunct to exposure therapy the process of trying to go back and revisit some of these horrific traumatic experiences but what in your opinion is the military really missing in terms of how to deal because as we showed the numbers earlier i mean they cannot ignore this this is an epidemic that's widespread this affecting hundreds of thousands of people. and it's affecting their ability to stay with their families to keep down a job so what do you think the military needs to do better and more of that they're not doing it all. well i'm a clinician respect knowledge this may work with patients in hundreds of patients over the years and many of them with p.t.s.d.

the truth is the way the military has to put the resources out each person responds differently to different kinds of treatment there is no one treatment for all and it takes months if not years to treat p.t.s.d. and there is not just exposure therapy even in the government's own indications. eight to ten percent of people are helped through voter therapy those coming into behavioral therapy interpersonal therapy other drugs the f.d.a. right now really approves two drugs for p.t.s.d. that if he were to be present drugs paxil and zoloft. other drugs are used people as a grab bag we military need to take seriously it wasn't so president obama changed some of the rules about allowing people for b.p.'s the. which a counselor that i jump at this the present a lot of it is because they were being diagnosed need to die they were being told they were a personality disorder the v.a.

and so they need to take it seriously they need to put more resources into discreetness individual least of the each and every one of those hundreds of thousands of soldiers all right i mean certainly an interesting discussion to have especially as eleven million dollar study gets underway water and straight out contributor dr jeff kaye. turning out of the crisis in the eurozone and the fallout over the downgrade by the ratings agency standard and poor's for france and eight other eurozone countries it seems as of now at least the fall out is minimal with french president nicolas sarkozy downplaying it and saying it would change nothing and it seems at least many investors may agree as no major earthquakes in the markets have been experienced by this downgrade well author and investor jim rogers gave his take on all things euro to our own and he said now way take a listen to you shouldn't but bother to pay any attention to the rating agencies everything they've done in the past fifteen or twenty years has been wrong i

stopped bothering him long ago everybody knows that france is no longer aaa everybody knows that italy is no longer is highly rated as it used to be the market knows all of this this is not news i know you have to report something but this is not news to people in the market nevertheless sometime markets do react to these rating slashes bias in pay and other agencies specifically saying this time around that europe saw thirty of budget policies which you argue we already obviously know are not enough to get out of the debt crisis what's your view specifically on the crisis and how to get out of it. but the best way to get out of it is to go ahead and let people go bankrupt that the people who made mistakes take their losses the banks who made the bad loans the people who invested in in the bad and the bad banks they should take their losses and start over it looks as though the e.u. is about to make some of them take some losses and that will be good that way we can start over and go forward the problem ms no way is they're not doing enough

they're not taking enough losses they're hoping that they can get through the next election or two and then everything will be ok this is not going to solve the problem it may delay the problem a bit longer it does not solve the problem germany's foreign minister is proposing europe have its own credit agencies right now all the giants are u.s. based and aren't thought to have a fair grasp on the e.u. how do you view germany's proposal of europe having its own agencies well whether it's european or not is irrelevant the fact is you do need somebody competent and somebody who can examine and decide who is who is solvent and who has not sought you know its own until a few months ago that they had the united states is a aaa credit united states is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world it's absurd that it's true as was aaa now you just need somebody competent who can go in there it doesn't matter whether it's russian or australian american or

european just so you have somebody competent and these guys s. and p. and moody's have had a a semi monopoly for decades they have gotten corroded and lazy and sloppy and they're no longer competent let's talk about greece the country struggling to get agreement with its private investors needs of for the next battle outruns how likely is athens to return to the drachma after march as deadline it's been a warning of course you've been here for wants of different analysts that that's possible some of them think that that's what's needed. well it's certainly possible it's not going to be good for greece if they do it if they did that who's going to lend money to greece any time for decades i mean if they go ahead and withdraw from the from the euro then they go back to the drug may everybody knows they're going to print drug was day after day after day just is that good before you're going to have recurring periods of bankruptcy and crisis and you and greece sure they can do that they were a basket case before they will be a basket case again if they do it it would not be the best thing for greece but it

does not mean they won't do it politicians do police things all the time with that said germany and france have repeatedly pledged their commitment to the euro with chancellor merkel saying she wants all states within the single currency to stay how far do you think the powerhouses are prepared to go to prevent a greek default what greece it has to is going to default that's no way there's no question that greece cannot pay its debts they can do it in an organized manner where they can say ok we're going to put this together we're going to take fifty percent losses or whatever but they can just walk out the door and cause a crisis you're going to have some kind of default there's no one hundred percent chance of them where this down in an organized manner or a disorganized manner with your with greece leaving the euro going back to the drug more causing chaos i don't think that would happen not this year anyway it might happen some day and that was investor and author jim rogers and i will do it for

now but for more on the stories we covered that are to dot com slash usa also check out our you tube page it's youtube dot com slash r t america you can also follow me on twitter at christine. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. culture is that so much as i am going richard holmes was going to come and go here and you recasting america's global military strategy for just more of the same

bronco mommas new vision for the pentagon is aimed at saving. the emission free accreditation free zones for judges to freeze the rangelands the free risk free. to child free. download free broadcast quality video for your media projects and free media dog r.t. dot com. good

afternoon and welcome to capital account i'm lauren lyster here in washington d.c. and today u.s. markets were closed and european markets didn't freak out today after friday's rash of downgrades but the eurozone crisis has not slowed down one bit greece sends officials here to washington today for i.m.f. meetings because of fears a deadlock in the debt swap talks could lead to a disorderly default now if this is difficult for creditors to deal with greece how are they going to deal with a much larger country like italy whose debt is bigger than the whole economies of greece i.