Transcript
Most Americans Don’t Believe the News Anymore (Hour 1)
Daybreak w/ Brian and Jamie · Tue May 12, 2026
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This is Where Wisconsin Wakes Up.
It's Daybreak with Brian Noonan and Jamie Martinson.
Here are your hosts, Brian and Jamie.
I'm Brian Noonan.
It is daybreak.
Jamie is off this week.
She'll be back with us next Monday.
Big show.
Lot to get to.
Lot to cover.
Always more fun though when you are involved.
8-5-5-7-5-CIVIC.
8-5-5-7-5-2-4-8-4-2.
That's how you text.
That's how you call.
That's how you share your opinions because we want to hear from you.
And by we, I mean myself.
And then, because Jamie's out, Frank, don't worry, Frank is here.
So we will have Swiper stay at 720.
Good morning, Frank.
And if you're watching on the stream, you may be looking in the boy aquarium and saying, hey, wait, that's not Parker.
Parker has taken the day off today, Frank.
I don't know.
His work ethic is a little
He wasn't feeling well and he had some event last night and with his old college pals, so I guess, you know, I was
I've changed back in the day.
I would have taken a day off if I had days off like I There's been very few jobs.
I've had where I actually had paid days off So that kind of
That kind of frames how I look at PTO.
The fact that I'm still like, eh, because radio, I don't know if people will know this.
A lot of radio jobs, you don't get PTO.
And a lot of people are saying, well, in our jobs, I don't get PTO either.
So I empathize.
I know what you mean.
So you're very careful about when you take a day off.
In my younger days, if I had had like three weeks, I would have probably burned them by February.
They would have been, because I just would have been, I'm tired today.
I'm not going in.
I'm
Well, he's still of the age though, where you can ask people, we ask your buddies to help you move.
I think it was my, when I moved him to my first house, which was a small house and we didn't have a lot, we were moving from an apartment.
I still did it with a truck and my buddies.
After that, I was like, nope, it's, that's why there's professionals and.
We don't
things
I'm
Yeah.
You got to get some sleep.
But I want to go back and I just want to ask if you have time off.
Do you use it eight five five seven five civic eight five five seven five two four eight four two because We get a few that roll over so I want to make sure I have that to roll over and I don't know why I'm gonna roll them over just cuz in my mind I'm like it's better to bank them and can't what what if something happens Frank?
What if I have some?
Tragedy befall me and I need to take a few extra days.
Yeah, so here's the thing Civic media when I started it the company had just started and there were a couple things that were overlooked the PTO policy was one of them So it had infinite rollover and I've taken almost none during my time here.
So I have a stupid amount What what's the number?
It's in hours and not days.
So I don't exactly like
See?
It's a it's a different mindset.
We've talked about this before so it's it's one of those things back to back to this should I how long is the right amount guys because you have friends I'm imagining and I've got a I don't have to I don't feel obligated it's not obligation I want to go have a drink with a montage birthday but it's like how long do I have to stay so I don't look like a jerk
the first job I had that I got PTO because radio in smaller markets, like when I, when I started, um, you didn't get PTO.
And then even at a couple of places where I was like,
The independent contractor independent contractors don't get PTO and to win stand-up you who's gonna give me PTO myself, but The first day I took off and I thought Wow, I'm getting paid for this.
I'm getting paid today, and I'm not doing anything.
There's a greatest feeling in the world now Now I'm miserly and I try and again, I don't know what I'm going to use them for I have no idea
But this is this is a problem.
I think it's I I think when you have kids it becomes More important that you have them to just to use them as things come up because when you have kids They're getting sick or they've got this or they and you're like oh, and then you then you're like but I want to take a vacation Sorry, man.
We we just don't you don't have any more days But now we have our days, so we're not using them.
We're here today We hope you are going to join in at 85575 civic
Why are so many Americans losing trust in major news events?
We'll talk about a new poll coming out after this.
I'm Brian
Noon and this is Daybreak on the Civic Media Network.
Good
That one always makes me smile.
Jamie's out this week.
She's doing some business for the company, but I am here with you and you are here with me.
So jump in eight, five, five, seven, five, civic eight, five, five, seven, five, two, four, eight, four, two.
I want to know
your thoughts on this.
Why does it seem like so many Americans are losing trust in major news events?
Now, we've talked about conspiracy theories before and I've mentioned to you that I'm not, I never was a big conspiracy guy.
I usually would listen and go, oh, okay, maybe one point of this conspiracy theory makes sense.
But then if you follow things down the road, normally the whole conspiracy falls apart.
Well, more and more people are buying into it, and I think my opinion, part of it is, we get lied to and gaslit so much by this current administration that we don't know what to believe.
Well, most of us know what to believe, but it's still hard to not look at things and go, boy, this is...
This is seeming more and more fishy by the moment.
The reason I ask you this is because about one in four Americans think the April shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner was staged with a marked partisan divide according to a new survey published yesterday.
Now, we talked about this when it happened, and at first I was questioning some of the logic.
and I went through and like a lot of you, I watched videos, I read different accounts, I watched stills of things, and I was I was really starting to question.
So I may have fallen into this this part of the one in four, but I think after a few days and looking at things again, I kind of went to the other three and I joined that other group and I thought, now
this wasn't set up, but maybe some other things were.
Anyway, in this new survey that was published yesterday, roughly one in three Democratic respondents said they believed the event was staged, compared with about one in eight Republicans.
Now that's according to this survey by News Guard, which is a company that rates the reliability of online news outlets.
And we know, you know, if you have been on the internet, which of course you have, there's a lot of
unscrupulous sites out there, if I may try to be as diplomatic as I can while talking about, you know, sites that are based in misinformation.
So News Guard goes out and they rate these sites, and they're the ones who did this poll.
And, you know, where are you falling on this?
Do you find yourself trusting news events much less?
And when did it start for you?
Did it start in January?
Did it start
in 2020.
Did it start before?
Have you always been skeptical of what you've heard on the news?
So anyway, respondents for the survey were between 18 and 29.
They were also more likely than older people to think the incident was staged according to this report.
So I don't know, maybe older people just like we don't we don't care anymore.
the voice for America, whether it's going all the way back to like Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite, like you mentioned, you look at the old anchors like Dan Rather.
And then when, then when we heard like, I think Ted Koppel may have been the last of that breed, because then you remember all the scandals with Brian Williams, and making things up about, you know, or not wasn't it Brian Williams, it was
Tom Brokaw, I don't know, one of those NBC guys who had made up some stories about being in a helicopter and all that, and things started to erode.
And then during Watergate, people started thinking, oh, it was Brian Williams.
Thank you, Frank.
Sometimes I doubt my own recall, which is...
Probably just.
Zomers, you don't know me that well.
Sometimes I imagine the whole swaths of the world, and I don't know what they are.
John says, he chimes in at 855-75 Civic.
You can too.
Why are so many Americans losing trust in major news events?
John's listening on WISS and he's in Oshkosh because we have a president who claims everything is fake news while simultaneously doing everything he claims others are doing to him, the projector in chief.
he does seem to project.
And he is, I don't remember the term fake news before Donald Trump.
It may, if it was out there, I mean, there were people who were skeptical of the news, but every story was not labeled fake news.
Anything you didn't agree with was not labeled fake news.
It was just something you could say, well, that's BS, but you knew it, you knew it was, there was a semblance or a seed of truth in it.
So last week,
You know, a federal grand jury indicted the alleged gunman, charging Cole Thomas Allen with four felonies, including the attempted assassination of President Trump.
Soon after the incident that led to his arrest, conspiracy theories began to spread online that falsely claim the Trump administration staged the incident.
The News Guard survey found that 24% of U.S.
adults believed the incident at the Washington Hilton was fake.
compared with 45% who believed it was legitimate.
That's still not even half the respondents who think it was real.
So that's kind of...
That's kind of strange.
An additional 32% said they were unsure.
Yes, because we live in times where we're always being gaslit, so you never know what to believe.
The survey of a thousand American adults was conducted by YouGov.
It's very striking, said an editor at NewsGuard.
The results underscore broader skepticism that Americans feel toward the government and the press.
Increasingly, people on all sides of the political spectrum are distrustful of both this administration and all
the media but willing to trust unverified information they see online.
Do you fall into that camp?
I try very hard.
Now I've made no secret of the fact that I don't trust most of what's coming out of this administration.
Only because of track record.
If you're lied to enough times and you don't then start to believe that everything coming out of someone's mouth is a lie, then you're gullible.
And I don't care if that's in a personal relationship.
I don't care if it's the government talking to you.
I don't care who it is.
If you don't learn your lesson, then you're going to just repeat it.
All right.
Well, we've got other things to repeat, mostly that somebody's going on TV in the administration.
Forget to that.
It's daybreak.
Local news, community stories, and the conversations that matter most.
Now, more Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
Good morning.
I am Brian Noon, and Jamie's out this week, but she'll be back next week.
Have no fear.
That way you can jump in and talk to me now.
8-5-5-7-5-7-5-7-5-5-2-4-8-4-2.
Do.
Some of the things that members of this administration do actually help the president and the administration's image.
Or are they a distraction from the biggest issue?
The reason I ask is, you know, our transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, former lumberjack, former reality TV personality.
I hate to use star because, you know, he was on road rules or whatever.
Um, I don't know how you become a reality star.
I mean, the Cadac, Kardashians, I would put in that level.
uh maybe some of the housewives i've never seen one of the housewives show but i know they get bandied about a lot and um that's about it as far as reality tv stars in my opinion so he is uh coming back to reality tv now he has not been fired by the administration he is not resigned he is still transportation secretary
and yet he has decided it would be a good idea to make a TV show with his family called The Great American Road Trip.
It is a five-part reality series and it's going to air on YouTube in celebration of our 250th birthday.
It shows Sean Duffy and his family who is a Fox News anchor, in case you did not know.
They are traveling across
the country with their nine children, nine children.
I don't, every clip I've seen so far, it's two kids in a car.
So I don't know if they're taking their kids shift by shift.
If they had somebody airlift them across the country and say when they get to Omaha, they drop too often, exchange them for two others.
Who knows?
But nine kids, one, that's a lot of children.
Two, it's a packed car.
Now I've been on road trips with my family when I was a
little kid because we never we never flew because there were five of us plus my parents and they just didn't have that money for airline tickets so we would drive from Chicago out to the east coast or down to Florida or whatever and I love a good road trip now man I hated those road trips then because somebody was always having to sit this is something you guys don't have to worry about anymore but or maybe you do the hump
Whoever was sitting in the back seat in the middle had to sit with the hump.
Oh, yeah Yeah, you didn't want the hump seat or when we would when we got a station wagon You got to sit in the way back and then you got to look out at the other cars and maybe make some obscene gestures So your dad was like why is that guy beeping at me?
I don't know dad.
Mm-hmm
That's a horrible story.
It hurts my head just to hear it.
But I do admire your sibling love.
I don't have that.
My brothers and I would have fought to the death to not sit on the hump.
Like literally there would have been blood.
But anyway, so they're going on this trip and Rachel Campos Duffy is Sean Duffy's wife's name.
She is a Fox News anchor as I mentioned.
The motto of the show is to love America is to see America.
That part of this I agree with.
So Sean Duffy goes on to say it's more than a road trip.
It's a civic experience It's one of the most powerful ways to understand vast beautiful complicated place that we call home Here's the problem and I want to know if you agree with this a lot of critics are saying that this is tone deaf we are in a time where Gas is almost $5 a gallon There we are at war.
Let's not forget that
We don't know what's going to be happening with tariffs.
Everything is costing us more.
And a guy who is supposed to be dealing with the fact that,
you know,
The roads, the infrastructure needs work.
Everything that goes along with being the transportation secretary was put on hold for him to do this show.
I don't know why this administration is so
hooked on social media and being visible in ways that they don't need to be visible about.
They don't need to be posting on Instagram and Facebook.
They don't need to be hosting and participating in a reality show.
They need to be focused on what's going on in this country because there is a lot going on.
Rights are being stripped away from women.
rights are being stripped away from voters.
Again, a war that we had no decision on, that we have no reasoning why we're really there or how we're going to get out of it.
You name any of the myriad of problems that are going on in this country and we have one of the cabinet members deciding he's going to do a little TV show.
Lynn jumps in from Golden Valley.
She says bet his road trip is partially taxpayer funded They're probably have a 12-seat van.
One of my colleagues has one plus eight or nine kids.
Yeah, I'll two parts to your comment Lynn That's probably true the second part.
They do need some sort of giant vehicle now That's one of the criticisms.
Who's paying for this?
Well They say Sean Duffy said
that the show's production costs were covered by a non-profit group, the Great American Road Trip Inc., not the taxpayers, and that neither he nor his family received a salary or production royalties.
His spokesperson said that covered costs included gas, car rentals, lodging, and activities, and that taxpayer funds were used only for official government travel.
Okay, well, in the middle of the show, if he had to actually do his job, all right, well, the problem becomes, the problem becomes, since we're talking about who paid for this, some of the sponsors of this show are people who, companies that Sean Duffy has to help regulate.
Boeing, Toyota, Shell, Royal Caribbean, United Airlines.
Those are all overseen by the Department of Transportation, of which Sean Duffy is the head.
So he has to regulate these.
Comcast, NBC Universal, also listed as one of the sponsors.
Now that does not fall, obviously Comcast does not fall under the Transportation Department, but could be seen by some.
and not in a wild stretch of the imagination, has a little bit of a conflict of interest, but when has that stopped anybody in this administration from doing something?
Just because something seems untoward, doesn't make it untoward, but the biggest criticism is that it is tone deaf.
They're saying with gas at more than 450, like I said, up roughly 50% since the war started, people are just comparing it to
going on a foodie tour during the Great Depression.
Another commenter wrote Americans are struggling to afford gas and groceries.
But these two reality TV and Fox News stars are treated to free trips with celebrity visits and a cruise.
Read the room.
Mark and Marie Antoinette.
Very clever.
But you may be thinking well, okay, those are just disgruntled YouTube commenters.
There's always people talking smack on YouTube.
You can talk smack here 855-757-855-755-248-42 if you want to jump in with your feelings about this.
I'm sure you have some.
So the former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, you know him, he was among the first prominent voices to weigh in on this.
Pete said, quote, I love a good road trip, but this is brutally out of touch.
A Trump cabinet member making a documentary about himself while regular families can't afford road trips anymore, because Trump and his war put gas prices through the roof.
That was a statement that Pete put out on X. I agree.
I tend to agree with this.
We, it baffles me, and I know I said this before, but it's worth repeating it.
I'd love to get your opinion on it.
Why are they so fixated on being, not doing their job and doing all these ancillary projects to make themselves look cool?
Remember Kristi Noem, she was always in these commercials.
You know, Cash Patel now is making bourbon and giving it to staff members.
They're always on social media.
They have to be the first to post, which has led to numerous, numerous issues of bad information being put out there because they have to get online.
And the president conducts diplomacy online on social media.
It is, it's ridiculous.
And this is just, there's plenty of ways, how about if you want to celebrate America's 250th, how about you get some real American families, and you have them go on road trips, and you follow them, and maybe you splice it together, and somebody from the West Coast does a Midwest road trip, and somebody from the Midwest goes down South, and you do it that way.
And it's not, hey look at me, I'm so cool.
And you know, would people watch that?
I don't know.
How many people are going to watch this?
Do you plan on watching Sean Duffy and his wife and their nine kids travel around the country?
We all know this is a highly glossed up production that doesn't relate to real road trips.
They're not going to be imagined.
So let's say you leave Madison and you want to head out to Washington.
not dc but the state you're gonna you're gonna go up you're gonna go through the badlands and stuff and there's gonna be a lot of cool stuff to see and yeah maybe they'll stop at a few of the touristy spots but they're not gonna it's not a real road trip i want to see a family having a meltdown because they've been in the car for six hours and the kids all have to go to the bathroom and dad blew past the last gas station even though the sign said no more gas for 50 miles so he's white knuckle in the steering wheel because the the gas is on e and it's starting to go lower and he does that
tap.
He'll tap on the glass over the over the gas gauge, even though that doesn't do anything.
But we've all seen it.
Other Democratic politicians, including Governor Pritzker from Illinois and Governor Newsom from California, have noted the air travel accidents that have occurred on Duffy's watch while he was filming.
So they are echoing the criticism.
We had a plane hit a guy on a runway the other day.
We had a plane hit a delivery truck last week.
Yeah, maybe pay attention to what's going on in the airports.
But that's me.
We can, you know, what are we going to do?
We got to let these got to let these folks do what they got to do.
They're they're out there running around.
So the Department of Transportation told ABC News that the Great American Road Trip Inc is an independent organization and how and who they accept donations from in furtherance of their mission to celebrate America's 250th birthday is their
decision.
Yeah, but you're a government official.
You're a cabinet member.
You need to look into this.
You can't just deny all knowledge and wash your hands of any accountability and say, well, listen, they, yes, sure, they are allowed as a nonprofit to get whoever they want to sponsor it.
You, though, as the person who regulates some of these sponsors have to
recuse yourself from this and say, no, maybe you get a different cabinet member.
Maybe you do something else.
Well, I'm the only one who has reality TV experience.
Who cares?
You can't do it, but he's doing it anyway.
All right, now, since we're on TV and reality TV and we're actually streaming, but since we're talking about TV,
There is a channel that is coming out of Wisconsin that they say is educational, but feels a little bit exploitive.
We'll get to that and so much more.
Don't forget you can always go to Spotify.
Subscribe to Daybreak with Brian and Jamie and get all our podcasts, all the shows you may have missed, and you can download the free Civic Media app.
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This is Daybreak.
I'm Brian Noonan.
I'm the Civic Media.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
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Call or text 855-75-CIVIC.
Now back to Brian and
Good morning.
It is, what day is it?
Tuesday.
Yes, it's Tuesday.
It's 6.52.
We're glad you're with us.
I'm Brian Noonan.
And by when I say we, I mean Frank and Aaron helping out today.
Well, Frank's always here.
Aaron jumped in for Parker today, so we're glad he's with us.
And glad you're with us too.
8-5-5-7-5-7-5-5-5-7-5-2-4-8-4-2.
Where is the line or lines between educational, entertaining,
and exploitive.
And sometimes those lines are blurred.
Sometimes it's a Venn diagram where things intersect in the center and something can be a little of all of them.
And this story is not, I think it's two of the three.
So educational, entertaining, or exploitive.
You be the judge, let me know 85575 Civic 8557524842.
There is a Wisconsin based YouTube channel and it's called Code Blue Cam.
It's got more than three million subscribers.
Oh, that's what we, that's our goal to get three million subscribers and it has one and a half billion total views.
You can scroll through the page, you find video after video featuring high-speed chases, arrests of erratic drunk people, guns drawn at suspects, and sometimes violent events.
So it is an updated version, basically, of the old show Cops.
I don't know if you remember the show Cops.
When that first came out, man, you couldn't get enough of it.
It was insane.
Because we had never seen that before.
We had never had access to not only...
There weren't really bodycams.
These were full-fledged TV crews that followed police officers around, rode with them, and were on the scene when things were happening and people gobbled it up.
I remember watching it when they first started running and I could not wait to see cops.
Well, this channel ups the game because now it's on the internet.
They can get stuff from everywhere.
The channel's content is drawn exclusively from police body camera video obtained via open records requests, then edited to show the most lurid, embarrassing or sensational moments.
It frequently features footage from La Crosse and other Wisconsin cities.
So you want to see your neighbor getting pulled over for drunk driving and then, you know, doing whatever it is that they're going to do.
could be right here.
The edited clips are presented with dramatic music and voiceover, jokes that mock arrestees, mugshots, sirens and more.
Now, this is Code Blue Cam is one of the internet's largest and most successful body cam video channels.
In the header, the site claims its focus is quote, on education and informing the public rather than on public shaming or ridicule.
And that is the crux
of the quandary here today.
Just what I've told you about this now.
What do you believe is the educational value of this?
855-755-CIVIC.
855-755-248-42.
I will go on record and say that I see zero educational benefit of this.
Do I see entertainment benefit?
Unfortunately, yes, 100%.
I gotta be honest.
I watched a little yesterday when I saw this story.
I'm hooked.
I love it.
I love watching people do stupid stuff.
I enjoy, you know, now, granted, this... I know the argument.
I know what you're gonna say.
Brian, this paints police in a really good light.
You know, some police do horrible things.
Yes.
I know.
And I talk about those things too when there's police misconduct.
I talk about it.
I don't enjoy that.
That's not entertaining to me.
But some of this stuff is, and they've made it entertaining.
But is it educational?
Uh, no.
No, I don't, I don't really believe that.
Those who have studied the site agree with me.
They say it feels like the opposite.
Some of the titles of the video on the page include.
Alright, tell me how educational this is.
Drunk teen ruins his life in minutes over girlfriend.
When you're too drunk to realize you crashed into a cop and neighbor from hell finally gets a visit from police.
What's the educational value?
Oh here guys making really horrid horrible decisions So the audience for code blue
is huge.
So is the revenue.
The channel makes around $100,000 a month from videos alone.
In a few years, the accounts founder has turned Code Blue into a media company with an editing and writing team.
They are LJ.
So as of 2025, the site has even partnered with the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, the state's largest law enforcement agency.
They've also donated 10,000 to help the group.
Researcher Matthew Clark, who was written about cold blue cam says being featured in one of those videos was rock bottom for somebody he knew.
And yeah, you don't want to be on the internet at your worst moment because some people, some people make those kind of mistakes all the time and their life choices are not the best.
Some people have one really bad day.
And if you want to be caught in perpetuity,
on the internet on your really bad day, I know I would not want to do that.
The researcher went on to say the moments on YouTube for however many more years, potentially the rest of your life.
And you don't want, you don't want your kids someday googling your name.
And all of a sudden coming up with the fact that, oh my gosh, that's my dad.
It's exploitive entertainment and we all love that.
That's why the the daytime talk shows back in the day were so big.
Everybody loves a good everybody loves a car crash unless they're the one in the car.
on the other side of the news.
Oh my gosh.
It's the top of the hour.
That means we've got some, you need to know a lot of big stories and a lot more to come in the second hour.
Don't forget to check out our new social media pages on Instagram and Facebook.
It's daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
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