Chris Kitze: Xoom.com and BeforeItsNews.com Founder and CEO On The Future of America and The World
Many questions about the future of mass media abound: When will traditional media die? What will happen to traditional media outlets?
Perhaps the most important question of all: What will replace them?
THE CONTINUING RISE OF ALTERNATIVE MEDIA
Over the past several years, many new media sources have sprung up around the Internet, some clearly stealing all that was thunder from mass media. One might think, too, that traditional media giants were simply transitioning to more popular online media outlets, but surprisingly and unexpectedly something else entirely has usurped them: the rise of alternative media, especially news-gathering and reporting sources. Yahoo and Google both have had news portals practically since the introduction of the worldwide web, but they have largely relied on traditional news wire services and mass media for their information. After all, both giants were really part of the mainstream to begin with.
People are now angry and disillusioned with our government, which has repeatedly lied to us about many issues, and, worse, ignored the voice of the American voter. When we said we didn’t want Obama’s healthcare reform, and even told our elected officials this in heated public town hall sessions, our government again ignored our pleas. The mass-media news sources, like ABC, CNN, and Fox News all reported generally on the issues, but failed miserably to dig deeper and reveal how and why our own government blithely continued to rebuff the American people. With time, it became a whispered conspiracy theory among fringe Americans, then began diffusing into the mainstream air, prompting even conservative voters to harshly question the actions and behaviors of our politicians.
Given our traditional news media have failed to report the focus on the discontent of the American people, not to mention not report at all on the government’s attempt to steamroll its own people, many of us have turned off the TV. We’ve turned off the radio. We’ve discontinued our subscriptions to Time, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Post. No longer do we trust those traditional journalists and news reporters, who have been complicit in withholding vital information from the American public. After all, they work for the very people who have intentionally withheld information from the American public, and also have continued to toe the line of Wall Street interests.
The backlash is now upon us, and traditional media now feel it. They feel it in their pocketbooks, with the decline of advertising revenue across the board in all markets. They see it with the precipitous decline of their subscriptions. And they see that Americans are not willing to pay for their traditional news and information even on line at their websites.
Ten years ago, the Associated Press made the deadly mistake of forcing newspapers to pay for its content online.4 Today, those very newspapers and outlets that use AP content are competing against the very organization they support and help pay for. This model no longer works for AP or their subscribers, and the ones who suffer most are the readers.
BEFORE IT’S NEWS ESTABLISHES A FOOTHOLD
In place of these behemoth mass-media disasters, we now see the steady growth of news portals from independent companies and individuals.
Before It’s News is a news portal, founded less than six months ago by the man who brought us Xoom.com, a web community ten years before Facebook.
“We look at ourselves as a ‘news utility.’ We will allow almost anyone to publish almost anything. There are certain standards of quality we have to have with a site like this, or we get junk. For example, the stories need to be true. They can’t be defamatory. No pornography or anything that could be harmful to people is allowed. We do support just about any kind of political point of view, thought most of our contributors to date have been people you would identify primarily as Republican or Libertarian. When you look at the statistics of those in the US, you see that 20% self-indentify as liberal and 40% self-identify as conservative. And another 40% self-identify as independent.”
Mr. Kitze witnessed firsthand the lack of coverage of important news by mainstream media during the 2008 presidential elections.
“Blogs beat the mainstream media with scoops by hours or days. Many important stories didn’t even break through and a very small audience became aware of them.”
At that point, he decided to look further into that lonely niche, largely ignored by Big Media, and began assembling his business plan for Before It’s News.
“I was waiting for the right opportunity to take what I’ve learned in 20-plus years of electronic content on static media like CD-ROM as well as on the Internet. All those things we learned we’re now applying to Before It’s News,” he said.
“The fact is, there was an opening here for companies to make the public more aware of this kind of information that was intentionally omitted from the journalistic conversation.”
Before It’s News is up and running, yet still in beta testing, working out some minor bugs and adding new features. Regardless of the bugs, Mr. Kitze points out that they’re growing in popularity, day by day.
“By default, we’ve turned out to be one of the leading alternative news sources and because we put up anything by almost anyone, it’s a forum, a good way for people to express opinion. The primary focus is news, information, analysis, commentary, and opinion. Because freedom of speech can be a lightning rod, we allow people to post under pen names or anonymously. To our viewers, we say “caveat emptor”, we’re a utility service and don’t fact check things, that’s up to our contributors to do. This is also very good advice to take when you see something from the major media like AP, CNN or FoxNews.”
The man who designed business models and accompanying web-based companies that were more than a decade ahead of their time should know a bit about building for the future. His visions have steered him from one strong, successful start-up to the next, even though some were, as stated previously, ahead of the power curve.
With Before It’s News, Mr. Kitze has been careful to stick to a relatively simple model: offer good, sound, timely news that relies not on traditional journalists and news reporters to cover stories, but real people who happen to be in an area of interest or concern. Just because Mr. Kitze’s reporters or contributors didn’t graduate from Columbia School of Journalism doesn’t preclude them from reporting accurately on a story important to many people. Some stories are a bit raw in their style, but they do one thing very well: get the accurate message across well.
Relying on a simple business model and not an old, well-worn union-run model will keep Before It’s News in business for a long time.
“Print media are dying, you can see it every day. Like most highly unionized businesses, its cost structure is at odds with the revenue reality. Broadcast is also dying, but it’s going a little slower because it is real time,” he said.
REPLACING TRADITIONAL MASS MEDIA WITH A NEW BUSINESS MODEL
Let’s revisit one of those questions from the introduction above: What will replace those traditional media sources?
Mr. Kitze explains: “People have really started to shift how they get their news and information. And that combined with the debacle of union-run, old-style corporate slugs, these companies are all dying. The New York Times is a prime example. They have this huge overhead of this printing equipment and all the union people to run it. They have a legacy business model, which is around their entire news department, and now they’re being forced to cut that way back.
“For the news consumer, now you have unlimited choice. You can get your news from wherever you want. When I was a kid, we had our daily newspaper that would come out in the evening, we had our four local television stations, so how did people consume their news? People would get a newspaper from the nearby big city in the morning, they might listen to the radio during the day if they were in their cars, then they’d get the local evening paper or tune in the big network news casts at 6PM and finally get local news on TV at 10PM (the saying used to be “News at 7, film at 11, Colorado went to bed earlier than the east or west coast)”.
“What’s happened now is that people look at a shrinking newspaper and say, ‘I don’t need this newspaper anymore, it’s full of old news.’ About ten years ago I noticed that every single story I saw in the New York Times I had already read six hours ago on the Internet.”
How does Before It’s News encourage more people to embrace alternative news, given that most have grown up with CNN and Fox News?
“When you start a technology based company, one of the biggest risks is that you have to change people’s behavior. When you’re starting out, you just don’t have the money to change people’s behavior. You have to wait for that behavior to begin to change – it’s too expensive for a startup company to change behavior. We are at that inflection point right now and it is accelerating in terms of people getting their news online and with their phones now compared to getting it from TV and cable. Those things are playing in our favor. People don’t feel like they can trust the mainstream media because the media ignores things that don’t fit the memes promoted by corporate media. What are their memes? Socialism and world government. They favor it, most Americans do not.
“Most of the people in the journalism field are liberal. Unfortunately for them, if you look at the demographics, their customers are not liberal by a wide margin. A recent survey by Gallup showed that only 20% of the people in the U.S. self-identify as liberal, while 40% self-identify as conservative and the remaining 40% self-identify as independent. That is the fundamental disconnect with their audience – they are talking to only 20% of the people in the audience. This is driving the majority of the people online to look for alternative sources for their news.
“Some people have told me, I don’t like the news I get from CNN, but Fox News sure does a great job. Yes, in some areas Fox might do a better job, but the reality is they are both corporate sources of news. Corporate news is made to sound different, to appeal to different audiences, but it’s all the same and the reason is simple; ownership and the government.
“If you look at the actual share ownership, there are many interlocking directorships, ownership is from the largest, most powerful entities and most importantly, the government is a powerful interest. If you are a large corporate media player, you have TV, radio, cable, print and other assets. Some of these companies have taken bailout money and, in that instance GE, owner of MSNBC, NBC, CNBC, comes to mind.
“All the broadcasters (radio and TV) have licenses they get from the government. A license is something that can be revoked, so it’s about influence and control and the government can literally put you out of business with a phone call. So to sum up, you can control something through debt, government fiat and via the influence of relationships with people involved at high levels and that is why corporate media is not always truthful.”
AMERICA: FREEDOM TO FASCISM
Is Mr. Kitze worried about the death of traditional mass media? Probably not, given it is wholly owned and controlled by the same people who also directly influence our own government. His eyes were opened further when he met Aaron Russo, producer of Hollywood hits like Trading Places and also the underground classic America: Freedom to Fascism.
“A friend of mine introduced me to Aaron Russo for about two hours, in 2000 or 2001. Clearly, Aaron has had an influence in my thinking about all this. When I first listened to him, I said to myself, ‘How can this be true?’ When I researched what Aaron said, I found that everything he told me about the Federal Reserve bank and the way fiat money leads to fascism was true. When people talk about the truth, what else can you say? You either accept the truth or you are accepting some alternate reality that is not the truth. Truth, along with compassion and tolerance are the fundamental elements of the universe.”
Good point: what is truth? To corporate media, it’s whatever they print or broadcast. Thing is, what they call truth is quite different to what we call reality.
“As I already mentioned, corporate media cannot be truthful all the time: because they own interest in radio and television licenses in broadcasting and those are licensed. And whenever you have a license, it implies that someone else can take it away. And that is how they will exert the first level of influence. The other thing that is already set up are the Executive Orders that allow the president to shut down the Internet if there is an emergency. FDR stole people’s gold in 1933 because he claimed it was an emergency and apparently that emergency lasted until 1974 when President Ford signed an act of congress repealing this ban. You’ll see all kinds of ‘emergencies’ and false-flag incidents like this to try to legitimize the swindling of the public.”
While mass media are reeling from damaged balance sheets, alternative media are taking off. For now. What happens when mass media once again recover from their stupor and realize that this alternative media have walked away with their prized booty? Governments will start to shut down those alternative sites or restrict traffic to them.
“You can see the first early tests they [a government] are doing, like in Australia where they’re trying to ban certain websites because they have child pornography and we’re doing this for the children.
“That’s always the first thing I look for: whenever someone says ‘it’s for the children,’ it’s really for something else. Because politicians don’t care about children, as we just saw from the healthcare vote, they don’t care about their constituents. They only care about their own power, so when you vote you have to try to choose the person who is going to be the least corrupt. That’s all you can do as a voter.”
DROPPING OFF THE GRID
If our own politicians won’t look after us, then who will? And if there really is no one out there to do so, what do we as Americans do? There is a growing underground movement that seeks to break away from traditional living in the United States, going off the electrical grid, off the financial grid, and owning private farm property capable of growing crops and raising farm animals. Others, though, are maintaining their traditional lifestyle but focusing on teaching their children the truth about how our government and country really work and what they can and will do to ensure they have a future here.
“I tell my daughters: you’re going to have to live in this world where not everybody else understands things the way you do. Most people don’t have a curious mind and so they do what others tell them to do.
“And one way I’ve done that with my girls and my wife is to travel to places like Syria, Burma, places like that where they can start to understand other points of view. For example, they’ll say, ‘They really searched through mommy’s suitcase.’ And actually that only really happened when we came back to the US. There was never a problem going to those places that most people think are bad. Being a tourist is completely different from living there because you can leave. In many cases, the people who live in these countries can never leave and they can be tortured or persecuted for saying or doing things like practicing your spiritual belief. Through conversations with the local people, you quickly realize that people are not the government. That is one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned. The funny thing is that even in the most repressive of these countries, the people there are most skeptical of their media, they question every little thing they hear because they know it isn’t the truth. People in the West are only now waking up to realize their governments have not been truthful to their citizens, as well.”
Mr. Kitze also teaches his daughters something we all take for granted in the United States: our freedom and liberty.
“I get them [my girls] to start questioning things and saying, ‘Look at all these people: what’s the difference between the people there and the people in the United States? Sure, we have more money and they wear different clothes, but they all want the same thing we do: LIBERTY. That is why most people from around the world like the United States.’
“What’s happened in a place like Burma is that people have withdrawn because the government is so corrupt. You have two groups of people: those who actively run the country for their own private benefit and the victims of the government. If you want a cell phone in Burma, it will cost $2000 just to pay the taxes that “tax” ends up in the pockets of the ruling group. They’re not there to serve others, they are working only for their own benefit. And you have the rest of the people who are basically their victims, who have realized that, no matter what you do, if you do a really good job, they’re just going to take it all away through taxes or someone from the government will find something wrong with the way you run the business and the next thing you know one of their relatives will own the business and you will be out on the street.
“So what happens is that people withdraw. This is a Chinese Taoist philosophy where withdrawal is considered an honorable thing to do and that is what these people have done. They leave the violence to the government.
“In fact, many Falun Gong practitioners who have fled the persecution in China and are now legally in the U.S. have told me they see very few differences between the socialism we have here in the U.S. and Europe and the communist country they left behind. Taxes are high, the government determines what businesses do, who can build homes or use property and who gets to attend the university. Party members are given special access and treat their positions as a way to personally profit, not to serve others. Mainly, they tell me, the difference is that the CCP will use violence.
“The good people of these countries are invited to join the army or the party and they refuse. And when they refuse, they are automatically put in a category of people who are never going to get the best jobs, they might not be able to get a passport to leave the country, are persecuted or in other ways discriminated against.
“But the good people know it’s the right choice, so that’s why they do it. And that, I think, is the most important thing to teach kids these days that even our government is not perfect, but some of the people in our government are good people, too, and we still have a Constitution that is still the best in the world for people who want liberty.
“Most kids don’t have the experience of going to places like Syria, where you go on the Internet and your email doesn’t work, you can’t get to Amazon and Facebook. That’s a life lesson they need to learn here: that same thing could happen here in the US if we are not diligent.
“When I was kid, my family went to East Germany with some friends of ours from Holland and we drove to Berlin through East Germany, and I’ll never forget stopping at a rest area which was just an absolute pit. Of course, no one cares about anything in a socialist country. There was a man who was a little older than my dad and he asked us if we had any sugar. They were so desperately broke they didn’t even have any sugar. We went into East Berlin and the first thing you had to do was change a certain amount of money into their worthless currency. Their coins were made out of aluminum. Now our coins are made out of zinc and copper. Even the metal in nickels is worth more than the coin’s face value.
“My grandfather taught me about coin collecting, which is a very interesting way to learn about the history of a country. The value of currency when it isn’t based on precious metals always goes to zero.
“That’s where we’re headed right now. I’m deeply concerned we’ve already gone across the event horizon, like a black hole, where there is no way you will ever be able to escape. We saw it happen in Hungary after WW II, and a number of places. There’s a free publication in the Internet, it’s called When Money Dies (read it here: http://mises.org/resources/4016). It’s about hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic in 1923 and the stories alone are worth your time to read about it. I think the main lesson is that politicians don’t have the stomach to eliminate debt through repayment or bankruptcy so they try to inflate their way out of it. Mainly, it destroys the currency as a store of value and eventually as a medium of exchange. The inflation causes social unrest and poverty as anyone unable to put their money into gold or solid foreign currencies gets wiped out. There’s a story about someone trading their grand piano for a sack of flour and so on. People do have to eat.
“This is one of the things we’re trying to do at Before It’s News: get that kind of information out to people so they’re at least mentally prepared before it’s too late, even though they may decide not to do anything. At least they will have been warned.”
FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED
But is being forewarned also being forearmed? Even when the truth is staring at some people in the face, they will deny it. Worse, they’ll shoot the messenger. One of the big warnings about our government is that they get their marching orders from a higher power, and I don’t mean God. The First Sphere of Influence (TFSI) is a global banking cartel owned and controlled by the family Rothschild, and it runs almost every single government on the planet, including the United States’. TFSI has, over the past 230 years, followed a strict protocol of actions and behaviors, and have used these protocols very effectively for more than two centuries, to blackmail governments and their leaders to install central banks, pass highly restrictive and oppressive laws, force governments to allow TFSI to issue and print currency at interest, among many other insidious acts.
Inflation and hyperinflation are directly caused by the machinations of TFSI, which also is directly responsible for economic recessions and depressions. The result of all these horrible acts? Demoralization of the population. And when they’re down, kick them again and again to destabilize their situation even further. Once both actions have been successfully implemented, TFSI then forces a government to enact laws that severely restrict basic Constitutional rights, freedoms, liberties, thus enslaving a population and forcing it into submission.
“I think what we’re really dealing with is a debasement of humanity and fundamentally what’s happening is—it’s not a money crisis, it’s not a credit crisis—it’s a moral crisis.
“We have oppressive laws here, they have oppressive laws in China. The only difference is, they use violence in China and we haven’t used it here . . . yet.
“My theory is that we’re witnessing the worldwide death of socialism. It has run out of money. And it’s trying to print money now, but one of the things that will happen on the way down is that it will try to steal everybody’s wealth and just extinguish it.
“I think it’s going to be just like the Eastern bloc here, especially now that Obamacare has passed. The first thing that will happen going to happen is that 40% of the doctors are going to quit. How good is healthcare going to be with 40% fewer doctors and 30 million more patients?”
SOME TOUGH CHOICES AHEAD FOR ALL OF US
We already see these events happening. Question is, what are we going to do about them?
“People will deal with this the same way they do in other communist countries by creating their own private networks, in a number of ways, including the Internet and among individuals to conduct trade and exchange information. These are people who are on the same page. Let’s say I have a farm and I have cows and things, but the Communist government isn’t going to pay me anything, so I’ll be exchanging service and goods with that doctor. Productive members of society will increasingly move off the financial grid.”
“I think when Obamacare passes, you’re going to see the first steps of the revolt. But it will start with immigration.
“Think about the people who are really and truly hurt: those immigrants who came here legally, who waited in line, paid taxes and did things on the up and up and the poor who can’t find a job because the job they applied for was taken by an illegal alien.
“The unrest will start on college campuses because they’re raising the tuition because the states are now broke and students now have to pay the actual costs of their education. The students are upset about this and because they have a lot of time on their hands, they go out and rally and riot and things get violent. In many cases, they’re being led by a bunch of Communists who would like nothing more than to foment this kind of dissent. So they’re out burning tires, vandalizing buildings and breaking windows, etc. and it will spread.
“The next group of people it will spread to will be those who are receiving welfare, when their state checks bounce because the governments are broke. That is only months away here in California, as they have already held up refund checks and paid vendors with IOU’s. The states are in dire shape. The federal government will be forced to do some bailout of sorts, but I think they will intentionally let it get bad before anything happens, though, so they can take advantage of the situation to pass even more draconian laws.
“We’re in the age of law’s end. In Buddhism it’s called the Final Havoc, when people can’t tell the difference between right and wrong, you can’t tell the difference between up and down, when laws mean nothing. There is no kindness or compassion left in people’s hearts and they will harm others and do bad things for only a little profit for themselves.
“Politicians have sold their souls and principle for a few dollars to pass Obamacare, which is 2000 pages long. The Homestead Act was a mere two pages in the Congressional Register and that opened up the American West. The Wagner Act that enabled modern labor unions was a few handfuls of pages. And then there is the 2000-page monstrosity for healthcare that will be amended and then it’ll be another thousand pages when it finally clears the Senate.
“How can the ordinary person understand this law? Even lawyers can’t tell you what’s in this law. Under these circumstances, the best an ordinary person can do is to follow a higher law.
“The problem is that people’s hearts change when their backs are against the wall and for that reason, I think we’re within 6-12 months of seeing more social unrest in the U.S.
“During the Los Angeles Rodney King riots of 1992, you saw that the tipping point was reached when the police went home to protect their families. They know what’s going on and that things are out of control. That happens after about 24-48 hours.
“The services stop because of the lack of security. All the truck drivers watched Reginald Denny get his skull crushed by a mob on live TV, so they stop delivering goods. At that point, the shelves in the markets went bare. There was literally nothing on the shelves.
“There was widespread looting, too. People would go on TV and say, ‘Look at this great pair of shoes I got for you grandma!’ They had just looted them out of the store. This was covered live on TV and it was like watching the end of the world.
Back in 1992, there were only mainstream media and they covered only so much because they were spread so thinly across the county of Los Angeles. And also because their orders were not to cover any aspects of the riots that would further enflame the whole situation. Many important stories were ignored and left to whither in place. Others were told time and again and soon became urban folktales and legends. Others still survived in books, magazines and the obscure private newspaper or newsletter.
“The purpose of a news organization is to communicate the truth to the people. And people are not being told the truth by the mainstream media, though they are now becoming aware of The First Sphere of Influence through the efforts of people like you, Dean.
“Every day there are a few things that catch my eye, things I think are underreported and yet extremely important for people to follow. People usually miss the important things that, in hindsight, tell us that was the turning point. I think we’re at that point now with the healthcare bill going through, because people are going to realize exactly who Obama is and what he really stands for. Forty percent (the conservatives) already know that. The other 40% of the people who call themselves independents now? About half of them get it.”
THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS
Social unrest under an oppressive regime is inevitable. In America, one important detail will cause this unrest to boil over: the possession of firearms, both legal and illegal.
“Some of my gun-owning friends voted for Obama and said that Obama hadn’t done anything bad yet. I told him to come talk to me in about six months after his health insurance is in a mess and when he renews the assault-weapons ban and makes it impossible for anyone to buy ammunition. That’s coming.
“The problem with banning arms in our country is that we have such a long history of being armed. People hunt and enjoy shooting sports. They lived on the frontier and, as the saying goes, ‘when seconds count the sheriff will arrive in an hour.’ They were self-reliant because they had to be. There are still 100 million gun owners in the U.S. and that number is growing because people realize what’s going on and I doubt it if people will stand for it.”
JEFFERSONIAN PATRIOTS ON THE RISE
What will the US government do when it sees that boiling point across the country? People will come out of the woodwork, those who so far have been silent, and will stand up for the Constitution and our rights as Americans. We’re seeing some of them now, but in small instances.
“Look back to the moment when John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, administered the Oath of Office to President-elect Obama, he flubbed it . . . and that was not an accident. Why? Because Obama has had many questions about his citizenship and birth that still have not been fully resolved. What Chief Justice Roberts was saying, in effect, was, ‘I know what’s going on here and I just can’t do anything about it right now.’ That’s my take on it and that means don’t count on the Supreme Court to do anything about it. Imagine the rioting that would have happened if the Court had gotten involved with yet another presidential election.
“The other thing to keep your eye on are The Oath Keepers, and there’re a lot of them. Like the ‘silent majority,’ they keep a low profile, but they will cover your back.”
Does this mean we can all sit back and do nothing, while groups like The Oath Keepers do all the fighting on our behalf. Hardly.
Joseph Stalin knew that he could get away with most of what he did, saying, “I don’t care if ten percent of the population knows what I’m doing.”
This is a chilling testament to the egregious arrogance of our so-called leaders, those who feel that 30 million people in the know could or would never do anything to stop the ill deeds of a few despots or martinets in power.
THE LATTER DAYS
There’s a prophesy called the Latter Days, which holds that those currently in power will fall under their own weight, when the masses rise up and cover them over and over. Are we nearing the Latter Days now?
While there is comfort in knowing we will prevail against TFSI, what is perhaps most unsettling is not knowing how many of us will still be left standing when the final battle goes quiet and the smoke clears, and what will be left of our world. . . .
1 http://www.naa.org/TrendsandNumbers/Advertising-Expenditures.aspx
2 http://tvnz.co.nz/business-news/advertising-spend-decline-3419890
3 http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=107357
4 http://ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4730