The Men Who Killed The News (Book)

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• Offshore Finance/Kleptocracy & Money Laundering
• Geopolitics/Economics/Economic Development
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Eric Beecher is a veteran journalist, editor and entrepreneur whose experienced first hand the dramatic evolution of the previous 40 years of media.

From broadsheet’s to TV to the internet to facebook, podcasts, now AI. Eric has been across all these, both an employee and employer as the business models were repeatedly shaken and recast.
And he asks, what is the cumulative damage when owners of journalism place profits and power over civic responsibility and decency.
That book is called, ‘The Men Who Killed The News’ and series a history of media moguldom, the perennial story of power and influence chipping away ever so gradually, the role good journalism esteems in helping us make sense of the world. It’s not nostalgia for the good old days, but rather an attempt to understand how we got here, and whether there is anything that can be done about it.
Eric was formerly the youngest editor at the Sydney Morning Herald before being recruited by Murdoch himself to run at the time, his latest media acquisition, before resigning sighting ethical differences.
Eric runs today alongside his colleagues, Crikey, The Mandarin and SmartCompany. Eric is a major architect of modern Australian independent media, and it is my pleasure to welcome him to the podcast.

• All The Worst Humans - Phil Elwood
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• Offshore Finance/Kleptocracy & Money Laundering
• Geopolitics/Economics/Economic Development
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• Investigative Journalists

“I deserved whatever the opposite of a Pulitzer is.”

Phil Elwood is the author of All the Worst Humans, a confessional memoir from the dubious world of public relations.

As a PR operative. He helped Qatar win the 2022 World Cup. He spun the release of the Lockerbie bomber into a “positive headline.” Had the Gaddafi family, the Assad regime and plenty more among his clients.

Phil speaks with humility and incredible clarity about what he learned from that world. The moral grey zones, the craft behind the spin, and how media manipulation really works in practice.

It’s a rare, honest window into an industry that prefers the shadows.

• How propaganda and PR actually get executed behind closed doors
• The mechanics of “first ink,” astroturfing, and reputation laundering
• The moral compromises behind Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid
• Sportswashing, Liv Golf, and the new global game of influence
• Whether the media is more easily manipulated than ever?
• Whether AI and independent creators can break the old PR machinery

• The Elements of Power - Nicolas Niarchos
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  Previous guests on the podcast similar to this!

• Nicolas Niarchos First Appearance On The Pod
• Tim Butcher - Blood River (CLASSIC EP)
• Adam Hochschild - King Leopold's Ghost
• Jon Lee Anderson - New Yorker Staff Writer, A Life Of Adventure

Podcast Starter Packs

• Offshore Finance/Kleptocracy & Money Laundering
• Geopolitics/Economics/Economic Development
• Explorers & Adventurers
• Investigative Journalists

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In this episode, New Yorker journalist Nicolas Niarchos discusses the supply chains behind the clean energy transition from child miners and Chinese-owned mega-mines to the coming global scramble for critical minerals.

I’ve been eagerly anticipating his new book, and I reckon it is tailor made for this podcast. It’s the history of cobalt it’s extraction and it’s applications and shows how a single mineral has reshaped geopolitics, powered the rise of China’s technological superiority, and further locked millions of Congolese into one of the most brutal extraction economies on earth.
This is a story that begins with King Leopold the second the original plunder of the Congo but then runs through Cold War dictatorships and kleptocracy, and ends with Apple, Tesla, BYD, and the race to dominate the future of energy.
It’s Nic’s second appearance on this podcast on a similar subject, therefore we avoided to go-over all the same ground as last time. The first episode was about his New Yorker piece on artisanal mining in the Congo, his arrest in the Congo and the foundations for his worldview in covering this issue.
Today we go into his new book. Inside the mines of Katanga, inside the rise of China’s battery empire, inside the corruption that still governs Congo’s political system, and inside the coming resource wars that will define the next half-century.

• Eighty percent of the world’s cobalt now comes from the Congo.
• Most of it is controlled by Chinese companies.
• As much as 20% of it is still dug out of the ground by hand.
• Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, is expected to have 40,000,000 people by 2050.

And the world is about to need more of what’s beneath their feet than ever before.