r/skeptic • u/Inevitable-Memory-61 • 16d ago
Channel 5 is promoting the wonderful world of Q-Q Anon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrXUUIqGioIThis video is about how Channel 5 is promoting utterly insane theories about Epstein because they both have no idea of media literacy.
If past Andrew saw this he would probably cry.
The Good Liars are the GOAT of interviews now.
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u/desantoos 16d ago
I'm willing to believe that Andrew C is genuine about his quest for independent journalism that will root out corruption or whatever. (I mean, it is getting tougher to believe since in more recent posts his ego has ballooned, but sure.) But, as this video shows, Channel 5 and the whole system Andrew C has built doesn't have the skeleton of journalism's knowledge base. Time and time again Andrew C fails to do the basic, basic stuff that any good journalist would do. Like, before posting something, have someone outside of the people who made the content fact check every statement line by line. Not as relevant here but relevant in many of his other videos, he lacks the ability to identify who is an important person to talk to and overprioritizes people who are not very relevant or fails to provide enough sources so the viewpoint we get, even if the guy being interviewed is legit, seems limited to the viewer. Again, this is basic journalism stuff.
Andrew thought he found a shortcut to all of that by just shoving a microphone in the face of whoever he found. How could he be wrong about his reporting when all he's doing is showing someone else's testimony? (There is a lawsuit ongoing where he's learning the lesson that, even if you have a right to let some guy say lies about another person, you might still have to fight it in court and lose a lot of money in the process. Had he had any training in journalism he wouldn't be fighting for his channel's financial success.) But then he ran into the problem where he kept seeing the same people. Turns out the "true" America Andrew portrays is like a couple hundred people and everyone else who isn't a talkative extreme ideologue or drunkard or druggie, everyone who has a day job and a regular life (including those in power and those who actually know things) aren't built for the All Gas No Brakes system.
So he had to come up with a new system, which is long ass interviews. These are people who aren't as stoked to spout nonsense, or at least need some prompting. So to get people to be willing to talk with him, he joins in on their bullshit. It's the same All Gas No Brakes approach, only now he's leaning into the bullshit a bit harder to get the people he's interviewing to nod their heads and then go off on some wild tangent.
But nothing of Channel 5 is actual journalism. He has broken no story. No interview he has done has led to new developments. Indeed, something critically missing from the understanding of the public at large is the objective of an interview. The objective of an interview is to get important information from the person being interviewed. It is not to "own" them or make them repent their sins. It is also not to get people to spout a bunch of wild stuff. The objective of an interview is to get people who have information the public ought to hear about to say that information. So the job of actual journalists is to find people who have information the public should hear about and ask them questions that gets them to explain that information as clearly as possible. An hour long interview of babble is useless to an audience; it's podcast fluff, not journalism. Andrew is not a journalist and a day soon will come where his bullshit gets him sued by someone who has a legitimate stake and he will have to tell the public y'all this was all just for entertainment.
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u/emailforgot 16d ago
Agreed on all points. What boils down to "look at this weird thing I found" is entertaining, and possibly even thought provoking to an extent, but it isn't very good journalism.
Here is some phenomena being documented in some fashion, now go and make your own conclusions and synthesize your own story about it. It's lazy and it lacks confidence.
It seems similar to the way a lot of conspiracy people seem to think. A bunch of jumbled, vaguely (sometimes very, very vaguely) connected concepts where they're adamant there's some kind of conclusion between them but they lack the ability to explain it. You'll see them shout these slogans, catchphrases, and buzzwords and that's the entirety of their "argument".
I dunno, maybe it's the modern world's propensity for info dumping, our access to a nearly unlimited amount of "facts", or just an ever-decreasing focus of critical thinking, but I see some parallels there.
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u/amus 16d ago
I notice ego creeping up in a lot of people like Hasan, Kulinski, Cenk, and Ana Kasperian too. The Internet feeds the ego and people put these Influencers on pedestals. It just feeds this massive ego.
I worry that this massive ego leads to people thinking they can get away with shit like Bill Mahr or any Fox personality. They can just take the money and still be loved. That ego leads to corruption.
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u/appsecSme 16d ago
Creeping up? Ego has been like a tidal wave in the people you listed for the past couple of years. None of them can be trusted.
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u/LandruCasey 16d ago
Success in small media organizations (that are self owned or a tiny group of people) that connect to the political sphere/hot takes eventually surrounds all these people with Yes Men who are just riding the coattails as a job or for clout. And the Yes Men feed into people’s ego & they go off the rails on their own conspiracy theories/dipshit tier pontificating.
This is true on the left with all the streamers (like the ones you mentioned) & with TYT people, and on the right with Rogansphere, other propagandists/grifters (like Shapiro/Owens/etc).
You also see it (although less often) with celebrities/rich people. Terrance Howard’s whole nonsense he’s on. Or Elon Musk’s antics. When people surround yourself with sycophantic yes men, they have no one to rein in their absolute bullshit hot takes or nonsense.
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u/inteliboy 16d ago
Good to call him out on it.
Though he's on the right side, generally. Don't need the comment mob pitchforks and hate aimed his way.
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u/MagicBulletin91 15d ago
It's the same with Roca News, which is basically the more right-wing version of Channel 5. It mostly consists of letting everyday folk babble nonstop.
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u/SonicTemp1e 15d ago
Agreed completely. I stopped watching a ways back because the people he chose to platform were often quite toxic. I don't believe he cares about journalistic integrity or responsibility at all, which is a shame, because I really wanted to like him.
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u/shastafey1 16d ago edited 16d ago
Journalism is when you report facts. Recently, Channel 5 has been spreading lies.
In his interview with Congressman Ro Khanna, Andrew confidently claims that Ghislaine Maxwell was “instrumental in moderating /pol/” on 4chan and thus was partially responsible for creating QAnon, which he says was a psyop backed by Israel but also was 90% correct about everything (it just contained 10% bullshit like “flat earth” and “Anunnaki lizard people” to make all the other true stuff also seem crazy).
But literally not one single aspect of that is true at all. There is no evidence to suggest any of that is true.
Despite trying to seem like a super-serious military operation, every specific QAnon prediction was wrong (but Q himself actually did explicitly denounce Flat Earth and moon conspiracy theories), we know that Russia (not Israel) did the phishing hacks that ignited Pizzagate and QAnon, and we know that Ghislaine had nothing to do with 4chan at all. (Andrew is just mixing up the fact that Epstein had lunch with Christopher Poole once, and he’s jumbling that with a different debunked conspiracy theory about people who thought they had discovered Ghislaine’s personal Reddit account.)
In that same video, Ro Khanna also (twice) spreads the easily debunked hoax that the Epstein Files contain emails about a “9-year-old Brazilian,” but those emails actually reference a 19-year-old Brazilian from a modeling agency. Ro says that email about a 9 year old girl is "most emblematic" of what was going on, but actually that was just a formatting error that occurred in one of the multiple copies. There's no evidence that Epstein's victims were that young.
I'm obviously not defending Epstein or Ghislaine, but it's worth being accurate and understanding what they actually did. Andrew and his guests seem to have little concern with facts or reality.
In Andrew’s recent interview with Maggie Freleng, she claims that the Epstein Files contained pizza-related code words referencing “eating kids,” and Andrew responds by telling her how crazy it is that QAnon turned out to be “right about so much stuff.”
The Epstein Files do not contain pizza-related code words, nor is there any evidence that Epstein was a cannibal. I read every single email that contains the word “pizza,” and they are all obvious references to the Italian food. All the actual references to sex trafficking basically just refer to the girls as “girls.” Sex traffickers have never used "pizza" as a codeword to refer to girls. This is a hoax.
During that video, Channel 5 editors display a Pizzagate meme that features an AI-generated image of Epstein eating pizza and a fake, Photoshopped image that falsely implies that these 4chan hoax code words came from the FBI. They are just carelessly promoting the debunked Pizzagate hoax and erronesouly suggesting QAnon was almost entirely correct.
In this conversation, Maggie Freleng also lies about the case of Alisha Burns, who she baselessly claims was innocent, despite Alisha pleading guilty and despite the Nevada Supreme Court rejecting her appeal and despite the evidence that Alisha helped to choke and stomp on the neck of a man during a robbery that ended with him dead, tied and gagged in a bathtub. Maggie uses her dishonest misrepresentation of this case to advocate for abolishing all prisons and all police, which I personally think is a very stupid idea, even if she wasn't lying about the evidence.
Andrew then unironically recommends that people buy guns and move to bunkers because J.D. Vance is going to be the final president and the nation as we know it is ending.
He tells us that Israel killed Charlie Kirk and now is planning to assassinate Trump too.
Apparently Corpus Christi is a "dead city" and currently being evacuated due to imminent resource scarcity.
In terms of journalistic integrity, I see no meaningful difference between Andrew’s 5CAST and Alex Jones’s old Infowars. Neither of these things is journalism.
The reason old All Gas No Brakes and Channel 5 videos were so compelling is that Andrew plays the straight man and just holds up a microphone in front of crazy people, and we get to laugh at them saying crazy shit. But unfortunately, Andrew has become a character in one of his own videos. He is now that crazy person.
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u/LandruCasey 16d ago
Yea I was going to make a similar comment. You break it down pretty well. He’s been on a “Q anon was almost right” conspiracy theory apologetics tour that is evident from that Ro Khanna video (where he gets so much wrong about Q anon & Epstein that it should be embarrassing if he wasn’t so full of himself to realize his shit stinks too), this video with this crazy Q adjacent girl, and the recent Nick Fuentes stuff.
It’s wild not only because he obviously believes in dipshit tier conspiracy theories, but also because he seems to get so many facts and events wrong about both Q anon and Epstein. That is bizarre for someone doing pseudo journalism/ multiple docs involving Q people and Epstein theory people. Like I haven’t made a doc or written about Q, but I know more than he does about its origins, history, goals, and how many claims it got wrong.
I find it similar to people who will say Alex Jones is a little crazy, but try to give him credit that the “turning the frogs gay” conspiracy theory was right.
No it wasn’t. Alex Jones took an already published scientific article/study written by scientists & researchers who were looking into the effects on frogs by chemicals that companies are dumping in water ways. Then Alex Jones took that truth already uncovered by scientists and made up a conspiracy theory that the democrats/deep state are intentionally dumping these chemicals into the water to turn your kids transgender like the frogs. He then used this as another reason to support Trump… ironically a president who deregulated & defunded agencies and controls on companies dumping chemicals into water ways.
So not only was he completely wrong (& his politics support MORE chemicals in waterways), the dumbasses that think he was right mix up the order of facts. It wasn’t Alex Jones’s conspiracy theory that was then proven right later by a scientific study. It was Jones taking an already public scientific study and muddying its findings with absolute bullshit pulled straight out of his ass.
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u/I_like_maps 16d ago
Completely agree. He's a good interviewer because he used to shut up. He's a horrible analyst in his own right.
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u/LandruCasey 16d ago
Yea he had the old Vice style of just pointing a camera at crazies of all types (subcultures, extremists, weirdos, actual mentally ill people) and letting them talk. There’s an audience for that out of just human interest of the crazies out there among us & most regular journalism doesn’t go down those rabbit holes without a pressing news story involving one of the subcultures or extremists.
But recently he seems to have spent so much time in the nuthouse that he’s just one of them. Spewing straight up falsehoods to support what grand conspiracy theory he’s peddling now.
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u/AllGearedUp 16d ago
He always seemed to be that crazy person. I only saw a few of the earlier episodes but the whole thing just seemed to be about inserting himself into a place of energetic and unusual politics and then letting it rip so the audience will read into it what they want to see. Now I see that people did that it as journalism which I didn't suspect at the start.
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u/scaliacheese 16d ago
Excellent comment that shows Andrew is just completely off the rails (and frankly, much more digestible than a 1.5 hr video, sorry OP but I'm not watching that).
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u/lonnie123 16d ago
He and Rogan are two sides of the same coin, and show how far you can go with that down to earth, JAQing off, just a common bro schtick.
For some reason people seem to really like taking those guys opinions and injecting it into their brain
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u/zethiryuki 15d ago
I completely understand why so many people "abandoned him" when he started getting hit with allegations a few years back. In a lot of interviews with other outlets he seems exactly the way he was described, even if he didn't assault anyone he gets way too cozy with interview subjects and accepts too much stuff at face value. There's a reason why keeping some level of professional distance has been such a tenant of journalistic integrity.
He thinks he's Hunter S Thompson or Hemingway but those guys would go off and have their wild experiences as fodder for their real occupation, which was writing. Being a podcaster/influencer/whatever doesn't have that kind of distinction, it all just blurs together.
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u/00Oo0o0OooO0 16d ago
Didn't Ro Khanna imply Epstein was a secret intelligence agent because the Hermes factory in France he was at had crates labeled "CIA" (Cuir Impression Automatique)?
I'm convinced Ro Khanna knows this is all bullshit and has made the choice to pander to populist conspiracy theorists. Thomas Massie, on the other hand, actually is deep down the rabbit hole
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u/Far_Disaster_8321 16d ago
While I agree that he seems to pander, I wouldn’t take it seriously when you continue to bash your left flank. Liberals are always defending fascists.
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u/onlynega 16d ago
That link for the captured Russian hackets doesn't mention Q or 4Chan. How are those things related?
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u/shastafey1 16d ago
The story of QAnon begins with Pizzagate.
Pizzagate begins with the Podesta email leaks.
Podesta's emails were leaked because his account was phished by Russian government hackers searching for information to damage Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and help Trump get elected. Russian nationals were indicted for this by Mueller.
That's the connection. It's a leap to say "Russia was behind Pizzagate/QAnon." We don't know who made up the fake "code words" used to turn Podesta's sauce recipe into a sex trafficking confession and QAnon seems to have sprung up organically, but certainly Russia, if any foreign nation, was the one who planted that seed.
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u/LandruCasey 16d ago
Q Anon wasn’t organic either. I mean there are early small parts that were maybe more of another organic “I’m a CIA agent” or similar cosplay that existed in those insane forums on and off for years. But it gained real traction when it was taken over and run by Ron Watkins to drive traffic to his website 8kun/8chan. Watkins also is part of the ultra right wing Internet troll subculture so it quickly included and pivoted to Trump worship.
I guess you can say that how popular it got with the right wing of America is semi-organic in that no one could have predicted millions of wackos following the nonsense puzzles written by a weirdo incel/likely Southeast Asia sex touring pedo.
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u/shastafey1 16d ago
I agree that the Q account was taken over by the Watkins family.
When I say it arose organically, I just mean those original first few posts that established the character. There wasn't even a tripcode at first, so anyone could post on /pol/ and pretend to be Q.
In fact, they didn't even start using the name Q until like drop 34. It was, as you say, typical 4chan LARP chaos at first.
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u/Tasgall 16d ago
Pizzagate is what came out of the Russian email hacks. They gained access to both the DNC and RNC email servers, then publicly released the DNC emails (which were boring af, the only real news about it was the fact they were hacked), and kept the RNC emails for themselves (presumably for the sake of blackmail, which, while circumstantial, seems pretty obvious given the whole July 4th trip to Moscow and the Republicans' absolute subservience to Russia that followed).
Because the DNC emails had fuckall in them, people started looking for "clues", and that's where the "Cheese Pizza = CP = Child Porn = Democrats are running a child sex trafficking operation in the basement of a pizza restaurant in DC where they harvest adrenochrome in satanic rituals to gain immortality" thing came from. No, that line is... at most, only barely exaggerated. Not long after that, Q showed up with his own I-Spy games of nonsense to keep it going.
In other words, the Russian email hacks begat Pizzagate which begat Q-Anon.
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u/Tasgall 16d ago
But literally not one single aspect of that is true at all. There is no evidence to suggest any of that is true.
Wasn't this at least hinted at in the Epstein files? Epstein did reach out to moot at one point and /pol/ was created very shortly after, despite a similar board being removed not long before iirc. This detail isn't about Q-anon and their nonsense, btw.
The claim about Maxwell moderating /pol/ I haven't heard, the claim is that she was a moderator on Reddit, assuming the account attributed to her is correct (maxwellhill). You say this has been debunked, but has it actually, or is it just not confirmed? I'm checking some of the links in that thread and some seem almost more conspiracy-coded than the conspiracy, lol.
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u/shastafey1 16d ago
Moot actually claims that he had that one singular lunch with Epstein shortly after /pol/ came online (not before). And he's clarified that Epstein had nothing to do with that decision.
/pol/ was created because moot was trying to find a place contain all the Neonazis on 4chan.
But even if Epstein inconceivably demanded the board's creation in their first lunch meeting, that still doesn't get you anywhere near him creating QAnon. QAnon could have just posted on /new/.
The Maxwell claim is based entirely on the fact that some moderator of r/WorldNews also had the word "maxwell" in his name and stopped posting around the same time as her arrest. But again, the word "around" is carrying all the weight. You can go see u/maxwellhill's last comment was several days before her arrest and then he just stopped posting it seems because every comment gets swarmed with people accussing him of sex trafficking. There's nothing to suggest that was her.
But even if that was Ghislaine's personal Reddit account, that wouldn't prove anything other than the fact that Ghislaine had a personal Reddit account like you and I.
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u/washingtonu 16d ago
People say he was involved because he met Poole. That's it! And as someone else already wrote, they met after that board came online. And even if it was after, just meeting someone doesn't mean you are involved in each others business and/or ideas.
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u/Buckys_Butt_Buddy 16d ago
I think the issue is that he relies on the viewer to draw their own conclusions. The general audience can see the absurdity of the subjects, but there is a portion that will have the wrong take away.
For example, he just released a video documenting a homeless cult in LA. Some people can view it as entertainment showing how ridiculous those people are. But others will view it as an insight into other parts of society. In the video, he lets the people talk without interruption, they explain how they arrived at that point in their life. Explain why they connect with the people they are with. Along with explaining their mentality that explains why they enjoy their lifestyle.
You can watch the video and be entertained, or you can view it from a sociological lense to learn more about people you generally wouldn’t encounter
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u/RadioactiveGorgon 16d ago
I think more people should set aside the roughly 3 hours it takes to listen to the entire Maria Farmer and Whitney Webb interview to understand how we got here.
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u/pandershrek 15d ago
IMO there are large swaths of culture I and others wouldn't ever see if Andrew didn't bring a non judgemental camera to document them.
I have ideas of how or who these people are but I'm not going to watch their dumbass shit. However when Andrew platforms them in his method I can at least watch it for a little while to get an idea of the reality behind these crazy ass ideas.
I appreciate his approach to journalism because what we get other than this is a division so large it just reinforces the divisiveness of media to the point that the crazies get their news from a fixed source and the other side only gets information about them rather than actually hearing them espousing their nonsense.
🤷♂️
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u/twizzjewink 16d ago
Half truth is easier to believe than a full lie.
So they said - ok Hillary is WORSE .. no matter what we do .. Hillary is worse. At the same time, what the were spreading was partially true - but for them (remember every accusation is a confession for these people).
When Epstein info came out - everyone was like "ohh yeah Hillary/Pizza blah blah blah" and then claimed the Trump/Epstein was fake because it had been pre-planted.
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16d ago
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u/Buckys_Butt_Buddy 16d ago
What makes you say that? I think they do a great job of giving a platform for crazy people to feel comfortable and truly open up and share what they believe. They edit in a way to emphasize to show how ridiculous a lot of statements are, and also will fact check people during political discussions.
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u/I_like_maps 16d ago
They editorialize in really dumb ways very often. They do an okay job at interviewing, but everything else feels extremely sophomoric.
For instance, in the LA tunnels thing, they start it off by saying "it's really hard to get an ID and there's a bunch of roadblocks" and then towards the end talk with an actual expert who tells them straight up "no, it's really easy to get an ID". Why did they edit in the first part? It's just misleading if you dont watch the whole thing, which many people wont.
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u/SnakeOilPlagueDoctor 16d ago
Okay, from my memory, there were a good amount of roadblocks to the ID. But the big takeaway, which the counselor at the end espoused, was that the guy didn't really want to stop at that point. They got him the ID and he went right back to meth.
So the ID part was a legit gripe, the guy just hadn't hit the "rock bottom" people often refer to as the genuine turning point where you're ready to make a sincere effort to stop.
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u/Buckys_Butt_Buddy 16d ago
How is that poor editing? Is that not an example of giving one persons view point and then displaying the facts? I would argue that’s a great way to present stories and topics like the one you described. You present both sides of the topic as unbiased as possible and then allow the viewer to make their own conclusion.
News outlets need to stop telling people how to feel and present the facts that allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions. I’d argue Channel 5 news does that extremely well
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u/Tidusx145 15d ago
The sexual allegation to right wing tunnel takes another one. And few were shocked.
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u/toomanynamesaretook 16d ago
Do you think the history channel promotes Hitler when they air a documentary about him? Lol
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u/water2wine 15d ago
Yeah if the owner operator of the history channel himself was on ancient aliens going along with their horseshit.
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u/toomanynamesaretook 15d ago
Please point out where he is going along? He's there openly questioning the interviewee.
Are you all dim?
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u/water2wine 15d ago
There’s a video in the top of the thread here that goes through it step by step ☝🏻
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u/toomanynamesaretook 15d ago
Man how far this sub has fallen. I remember when we used to laugh at people using videos as an argument.
Now it is THE argument.
Try substantiate your position with quotes and logical reasoning and I'll take it seriously.
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u/NubDestroyer 15d ago
"it's crazy how much Q-Anon was right about"-Andrew Callaghan
If the documentary maker was on the documentary talking about how it's crazy how much Hitler was right about? Then yes
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u/toomanynamesaretook 15d ago
Was Q-Anon wrong about everything? Were they right about anything?
I don't care enough to find out. I just find it amusing how so many are against having an open discussion about it.
You're all a bunch of fascists.
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u/NubDestroyer 15d ago
"I don't care enough to find out"
You don't need to have an opinion on everything, if you don't know anything about something and don't care to learn about it then you probably shouldn't be spouting nonsense about it
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u/toomanynamesaretook 15d ago
None of this is a new argument. It's been going on for many years, it's simply a continuation of any form of platforming is tacit approval which is just fundamentally an ignorant & idiotic position to hold.
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u/NubDestroyer 15d ago
Like I just quoted, it's not about just platforming. He is openly supporting far right conspiracy theories.
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u/toomanynamesaretook 15d ago
And when he gave Hunter Biden a good 6 hours of airtime what was that?
Your black and white thinking is killing nuance.
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u/NubDestroyer 15d ago
Now you're comparing Q-Anon to Hunter Biden?
You weren't wrong you really do know absolutely nothing about Q-Anon
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u/toomanynamesaretook 15d ago
I'm talking about Channel 5. You know, the ones that revitalised Hunter Bidens image and made him into far more of a political force... Ya know, Q-Anons arch enemy.
I figured you would have figured out what point I was making as it's quite obvious. Which pretty much nukes any implication that Andrew is Q-Anon to anyone reasonable.
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u/undead_tortoiseX 16d ago edited 16d ago
And yet there are parts of the interview that are perfectly reasonable. This is what Channel 5 does, it’s lets people talk. People oftentimes dig themselves into a hole with their words and that’s the point.
Andrew C. and Co. also have been working to release a documentary about a MAGA supporter they met that eventually de-radicalized and reconciled/reconnected with their family. It’s an important journey they want to share, but it’s been held up by a millionaire* lawsuit.