oh did you. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution which says that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy direct health risks. will. never go on i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on and we go beyond identifying the truth rational debate and real discussion critical issues facing america ready to join the movement then welcome big. brother back to the big picture tom i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour

it's been two years as george zimmerman shot and killed trayvon martin on a rainy night in sanford florida americans now know about stand your ground shoot first laws but how much has really changed also more than half of all americans don't think the media tells them the truth that could organizations like first look media the home of glenn greenwald and jeremy scahill intercept restore their trust in journalism and reuters coverage of climate change is morally ethically and scientifically wrong i'll tell you why in tonight's daily take. it's crude news today is the second year anniversary of the death of trayvon martin but america still seems as far away as ever from solving this problems of gun violence and racism it was only two weeks ago after all that a florida jury declared a mistrial in the first degree murder trial of michael dunn who shot and killed seventeen year old jordan davis dunn shot davis after the two got into an argument

to gas station about the volume of davis' music was obviously done instigated the fight but thanks to florida's stand your ground and shoot first law the jury was. unable to convict him of first degree murder even martin's death brought alex to the forefront of american politics and got people talking about the complicated interaction between law race and the media but today stand your ground shoot first laws remain on the books in twenty four states and florida and georgia are even considering expanding their justice for trayvon it appears still in the works joining me now for more on this is d.l. brooks director of outreach and public engagement at people for the american way d.l. welcome thank you joe thanks for joining us two years out what do you think is the most important legacy of the trayvon martin case but first i want to give my heartfelt condolences to the family of trayvon martin and also the family of jordan davis because this is an incredible tragedy that's happened well and let's acknowledge that there are two of probably several hundred people who have been the

victims of these kinds of things exactly and so we got to make sure that we give our condolences to the family understand that we lost some some young folks to senseless violence in this country and i think any time we talk about stand your ground we talk about alex involvement in stand your ground we have to make sure that we remember the real victims of these particular crimes or. do you think that racial tensions have hardened to relax as a result of these and as they it seems like in some ways there's been some bridge building going on but in other ways right what i mean i think there's been some bridge building because there's been a lot of diverse communities that have come together to push back against a new ground push back against alex push of stand your ground around the country so i think that part has been healthy for america and we're having this type of dialogue that i think how can help move us towards change but at the same time i think it is also highlighted some of the racial divide that still exists in this country based on the profits of organization or organization like alec that working

with the n.r.a. and the gun lobby to get guns in america that are willing to undermine democracy. by working through a secret organization like alec to move these types of laws really for the for the profits of those organizations and those those industries the media. and i i think this was even more real larger the michael dunn case and jordan davis of the the media did not spend much time talking about stand your ground talking about the difference how the jury instructions are now different for example the old jury instructions were would have you know. let's see this is the the current jury instruction is if michael dunn was not engaged in unlawful activity was attacked in any place where he had a right to be he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground meet force with force including deadly force and before that the old upright two

thousand and five it would have said the defendant cannot justify the use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm unless he used every reasonable means within his power consistent his own safety to avoid the danger before resorting to that force the fact that the defendant was wrongfully attack cannot justify his use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm if by retreating he could have avoided the need to use that force michael dunn clearly could have retreated this issue these issues were discussed the role of the the n.r.a. and funding this thing wasn't discussed the role of alec and put it in and having these meetings where they bring together republican and state legislators and lobbyists with fifty fifty one on one to put these laws into none of this was being discussed in the media your thoughts are well i mean my thoughts are that's why it's important to have organizations like mine people for the american way and many of the other organizations that have been working on this issue because it's our job to call that out call those facts out and what we've been doing around the country wherever alec is is making sure that they understand that there's

a there's a groundswell of folks who are not happy with the way they're doing business how they're undermining democracy and it's really like a virus how they're trying to spread. the stand your ground laws around the country and they were organization that pushed it they were funded by the n.r.a. and the gun lobby and it was basically for the profits of the gun lobby where do you see anything coming out of this i mean are we moving forward or we slide back we are moving forward one of the highlights of two thousand and thirteen was that there was a tremendous amount of drop off from alec from from the state legislators that were engaged in alec so i think it was close to four hundred members left out and there was also several companies that left alec as well because it became toxic to be a part of that that organization because they were them being connected to stand your ground by actually funding this organization and i think there's a lot of organizing energy that's happening on the ground around the country the really pushing back and making folks aware that it's not it's not just the n.r.a.

it's these secret meetings behind closed doors with legislators sitting writing legislation with corporations that undermine our democracy and very well funded corporations and i mean the gun industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and you know throw in a couple hundred million dollars of state legislators sleep just you know no big deal. so. future activism should we be talking about alec or should we be talking about you know rational limitations on firearms or rash you know some you know having a debate about what is rational gun control where does it start where does it all think it's all i think there has to be a continual push and i like i know alec has said that gotten out of the business of working on some of these social issues but they've already lit the fire you know once you you strike that match and you like the flame you bring those legislators together it's already proliferating and so we have to continue that push to help folks really understand that this is a toxic organization this is where it came from they they work together to make

this happen they're in bed with the n.r.a. they're in bed with the gun lobby and they're doing this stuff for profit and so we have to make sure that whatever laws that we're going to that are on the books so that there is a democratic process that's behind those and the people are engaged in that structure about reaching public engagement people for the american way thank you for the thank you very much greatly appreciated. just. it's a good about a very very hypno pick glee ugly there good michelle obama on tuesday the first lady and secretary of agriculture tom vilsack announced that the government would extend its pilot program giving all students a select schools access to free lunches and free breakfasts sargon july eleventh

the program will expand to twenty two thousand schools across the u.s. the bomb administration estimates that the expansion will help nine million kids gain access to affordable hot meals with unhealthy lifestyle starts with not having to worry about where your next meal comes from good on the show obama for making sure fewer american kids have to worry. the bad michael press to the annapolis maryland police chief is under fire today for using a hoax story in testimony against legalizing marijuana during a maryland senate hearing yesterday priest who told lawmakers that colorado with saw thirty seven deaths from marijuana overdose on the day of the drug was legalized almost as soon as the chief finished speaking state sen jamie raskin called him out for his dishonesty his tube story about thirty seven people dying from marijuana overdoses actually came from the joke news site the daily current

and the reason of course that it came from a joke website is that no one has ever overdosed for marijuana in american history which the first group is apparently too interested in carrying on the failed war on drugs to bother dealing with pesky things like facts and the very very ugly rush limbaugh here in tuesday's episode of his radio show the right wing talk show host blasted the gay lobby for bullying arizona governor jan brewer into vetoing her state's he was discrimination bill as ten sixty two take a listen. all of a sudden now the left is interested in moral ality at least as they define it but you notice your folks how bullying is a good thing. the governor of arizona is being bullied you being bullied by the homosexual lobby in arizona and else where. in order to advance the gay agenda i guess in that circumstance bullying is admirable as usual rush is just spewing

nonsense on its of arizona's discrimination law many of whom are not gay and just believe in a little thing called human rights are not bullying jan brewer they used their first amendment rights to stop other bigots from believing in discriminating against gay people the fact that so many people still take rush seriously when he says stuff like that that it's very very. crazy to learn american culture may have just hit peak at stardom beard transplants her parents all the rage in where else new york city the capital of modern hipster is the procedure which stout's at around three thousand dollars per beard not follicle is simple care is removed from the scalp and then attached to the face transplant is permanent and all the new facial hair can be she'd been groomed

exactly like a girl there are naturally you have plastic surgeons who specialize in the procedure say that they make about three beard transplants a week prior to them all patients come from all sorts of backgrounds they've seen a recent in recent months a jump in surprise surprise hip types looking to buy new peers whether you're a fan of hipsters or not the success of the beard transplants is a good sign i see the welcome in america. who knows i might just start supporting that they are. coming up writers is supposedly one of the most reputable news services in the world so why is it try to pretend like the existence of global climate change is up for debate.

dramas the truth be ignored. stories others refuse to notice. the faces changing the world he writes now the. old picture of today's you know. from around the globe. broke to. t.v. .

i marinate join me on. that impartial and financial reporting commentary can from news and much much. only on the best and only.

in the best of the rest of the news according to the most recent gallup poll more than half of all americans fifty five percent do not trust mainstream t.v. radio or news outlets distrust is understandable name one was last time he saw david gregory really challenge some capitol hill big especially republican and when was the last time you saw him as n.b.c. really dig into net neutrality an issue that the networks own or comcast as a pretty obvious opinion questions like that have led some of the country's most talented journalists to look for opportunities outside of traditional media for the

help of peer omidyar glenn greenwald and jeremy scahill have started an online news site called the intercept which is part of all media ours first look media organization and now rolling stone journalist matt taibbi has followed in their footsteps announcing last week that he will soon start his own site within first look media into its web site first with media provides original independent journalism. could it soon become just as biased as traditional mainstream media outlets joining me now for more on this is jeff cohen media critic critic and founder of fair and accuracy in reporting. as well as the author of several books and jeff called welcome back great to be with you thanks joe so what's your take on first look media and the intercept and thrilled that i'm seeing the best journalists in the country investigative journalists like jeremy scahill

joining when greenwald it's already started the intercept it looks great i look at it every day now you matt sorry beat it's a real star in monitoring wall street and the political. nonsense. in washington d.c. that makes the wall street scandals possible and he's going to be heading up another on line magazine as part of the first media this is exciting and you know i taught my journalism classes over here and if we could college for years i'd say i wish there would be a billionaire who would put up some money set up something and say i'm getting out of the way you journalist run things and we don't know how it's going to turn out at first look media but it's looking pretty good at first what the guy who owns it has indicated in the past that he's rather libertarian in his world view do you think that that's going to leak into the coverage the way that we're seeing

apparently on amazon b c in the you know and lack of any coverage of comcast yeah well again i i don't think glenn greenwald i don't think if your idea is to buy media or star media so you can buy a seat in the direction of corporations the last people i would. would be glenn greenwald matt sorry be more boisterous jeremy scahill damn one pick friends so again i have real high hopes you are so right about and that's n.b.c. you know being owned by comcast and formerly owned by general electric now it's like fifty one percent comcast and forty nine percent unique there's no doubt that they avoid stories there's no doubt in my view that one of the reasons olbermann left and that's the n.b.c. is because comcast was coming. and what we're going with one of the few voices on national t.v. advocating for net neutrality and comcast of course along with their rise and it

is the major flow of net neutrality they want the open access of the internet stocks so it can be to cheer so comcast arise and can make more profit and they could push some of these more independent websites nonprofit websites whatever you want to the slow way which which raises the question now that net neutrality is been killed by the d.c. circuit court and that killing has been ratified by comcast and netflix cutting a deal pay for play deal the next shoe to drop many of us are predicting is that our internet service providers comcast in particular are going to start saying oh here's your basic service you know eighty five bucks a month you want news with that you want to look at the new york times the wall street journal whatever that's an extra five dollars a month you want streaming video as an extra ten dollars a month you want entertainment sites that section five dollars a month or an that's extra fifteen dollars a month whatever and they start moving content into essentially channels the same

way that they've done on cable television and if that happens and they say and they decide that first look just isn't a legitimate part of one of their channels what happens. you're exactly right and who's to blame it's the pretty corporate greatly mediocre appointees to the federal communications commission that we got from president obama. tom wheeler was a lobbyist for comcast before he became chairman of the of the f.c.c. right well and keep in mind that it is it's. the guy who's now the lobbyist for their corporate interests is michael powell would use to be the chair of the federal communications commission they flip souls yeah you and i can talk about how president obama is for or you know weak appointees to the federal communications commission is the reason we're we're in danger of losing an open internet but

that's not the kind of thing you hear on m s n b c where they protect obama and and and that's the problem when you put your finger on it and why the internet is so important and why new media and independent outlets are so or that in the corporate media you have such a narrow spectrum won't you jeff jeff i absolutely i'm just flat out run out of types are you but jeff wells and thank you so much for being with us thank you. the mainstream media is failing us when it comes to covering the story of the century man made climate change and his media matters as recently reported there's no better example of this failure than the decline of cover of climate coverage

reuters since that news organization hired paul ingrassia as an editor grosse's a self described climate skeptic and questions whether or not global warming is man made denying climate change is absolutely nuts the un zinner governmental report. climate change is a consensus document meaning that one hundred percent of the people who worked on it agree with its findings the i.p.c.c. is the authors of the top climate scientists on earth and they say that burning fossil fuels causes climate change is that in light of this sort of scientific consensus denying climate change is about as sensible as believing that a shape shifting reptile illuminati controls the world in fact in terms of pure percentages there are more people who believe in a shape shifting reptile illuminati there are scientists who deny climate change the writers in grazia is apparently perfectly comfortable with his crazy ideas so comfortable in fact that he's been pushing them on the writers who work under him her new media matters the so-called skeptic has used his position of the top of

reuters editorial team to both suppress actual climate coverage and to give undue attention to climate change deniers former reuters asia climate change reporter john fogarty talked about what it was like to work for and in a recent blog post from very early in two thousand and twelve he said i was repeatedly told that climate environment stories were no longer a top priority for reuters and i was asked to look at other areas progressively getting any climate change theme story published got harder it was a lottery by mid october i was informed the climate change just wasn't a big story for the president but that it would be if there was a significant shift in global policy very soon after that conversation i was told by climate change will was abolished forward he also said in the same blog post that in grosse you told him at a company function that he was a climate skeptic but not a rabid one you know because there's no rational way to deny established scientific fact but a grass is assault on global global warming coverage hasn't just involve censoring journalists who report on climate issues according to media matters and the

columbia journalism review since he was hired reporters have quote felt pressure to provide false balance when writing stories and quote on climate change evidence of this kind of false balance is fairly easy to find for example one recent. reuters article discussing john kerry's comments about climate change being the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction included a sentence that said some skeptics argue that a rise in global temperature is due to natural variabilities or other non-human factors would reuters ever publish an article about the discovery of a new neanderthal skeleton that included a sentence calling into question the theory of evolution no only would because giving creationism equal footing with science is crazy and giving climate change skepticism equal footing with climate science is also crazy reuters is or was it seems one of the most reputable news agencies in the world under paul ingrassia however it's entered fox so-called news territory during his two years in the

organizations that authorial team climate change coverage has been cut in half and the coverage there has been has been infected with the plague of false balance but the prior problem of climate change coverage isn't just a reuters problem entire mainstream media is failing us when it comes to covering climate change media matters is looked at how the news outlets talked about the i.p.c.c. is recent report on the causes of global warming and the results are staggering supposedly established papers like the new york times the los angeles times the washington post quoted climate change deniers way out of proportion to their actual influence within the scientific community which is pretty much nil not surprisingly things read and worse over fox so-called news where sixty nine percent of climate change gets brought out by bill o'reilly and friends to talk about the i.p.c.c. report were actually fringe deniers and here's the worst part of it all the vast

majority seventy seven percent of climate deniers quoted by or featured as guests by the mainstream media weren't even scientists in light of what we know about global warming about how it's already destroying communities across the world about how it's litter. really killing tens of thousands of people and about how it could lead to the earth's sixth mass extinction it's hard to see the mainstream media's coverage or lack thereof of climate change as anything less than morally and ethically criminal if people will wake up to the dangers of a warming atmosphere and melting polar ice caps soon it could be game over for humanity humankind and that's why the media needs to stop treating climate change deniers as if they're rational people and start treating them like they are wackos who are often hired hands of the fossil fuel industry a couple of months ago los angeles times said that it would no longer publish letters from climate change deniers because saying there is no sign humans have

caused climate change is not stating an opinion it's asserting a fact factual in accuracy it's time for the rest of the media to follow suit all media outlets t.v. radio print or otherwise should pili stop publishing the factual in accuracies of climate change deniers the debate is over climate change is real and it's probably worse than we thought it's time for the mainstream media to tell it like it is and stop treating wacko theories as if they're the truth after all the future of all life on earth is steak. and that's the way it is tonight wednesday feb twenty sixth two thousand and fourteen and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there get active tag you're.

it. i would rather as questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on our t.v. question or. primary

name join me. for in-depth impartial and financial reporting commentary cancer news and much much. only on bombast and only on. clay.

coming up on r t u.s. troops may soon be gone from afghanistan and the pentagon is preparing a full withdrawal of all troops after the u.s. and afghan governments couldn't reach a bilateral security agreement what does this mean for the future of afghanistan find out just ahead. and the line between church and state blurs in the u.s. military american service members have come forward with claims that religion has been forced on them during training and while on duty a closer look at that coming up. a new study cast a weary months santo herbicides the study claims that round may be linked with war americans suffering from celiac.