An Exclusive Preview of Our New Live, Prime-Time Rumble Show: "System Update"
The soon-to-launch one-hour nightly program was spurred by our commitment to fortifying free speech platforms and the success we have had there in already attracting a large audience.
On Friday, we published a lengthy article documenting the consortium of state and corporate power that is aggressively imposing a new and escalated regime of censorship online and, increasingly, offline. Its primary purpose was to report on new evidence identifying the members of this consortium and the new tactics employed to further accumulate the power to marginalize, silence and even punish those who dissent from the pronouncements of institutions of authority.
The central theme, which we have reported here often, is that it is not Big Tech executives in charge of this censorship program but the Biden White House and U.S. Security State. Superb new reporting today from The Intercept's Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstein bolsters that view, as it reveals never previously seen documents showing how closely U.S. security officials are involved in these decisions, including the FBI's pressure on Facebook to suppress The New York Post's pre-election reporting on the Biden family, dissent on COVID orthodoxies, and any information that may call into question the credibility of leading institutions of authority (I highly recommend the whole article but this whole Twitter thread by Fang highlights some amazing documents). This is the consortium of state and corporate power on which much on so much of our reporting has focused, and it is the critical context for why we are deciding to launch our new program on this free speech platform.
The final section of our new article from Friday announced and described the new, exciting project I had been referencing — and was working to build — for many months. Starting very shortly, we will launch a new, nightly, prime-time live news and politics broadcast on Rumble, the rapidly growing free speech alternative to YouTube. Our new show will air at 7:00 pm ET, each Monday through Friday. It is part of a new network of live shows in which Rumble is investing. The first show, hosted by Russell Brand and called "Stay Free,” debuted last month and, though less than a month old, is already routinely attracting significant audience sizes. I was a guest on Brand's debut show, starting at the 41:00 minute mark, where we discussed the motives, objectives and ethos of this new network. As this Wall St. Journal article from last month reporting our new program explains, other hosts will be unveiled shortly.
I wanted to write a separate note about our new show due to the likelihood that some of the key details were likely obscured by the 6,000-word reporting about the new censorship regime that preceded this last section. But I also want to provide subscribers here with an exclusive glimpse of what this show will be, how it will function, what it will look like and how we will use the new state-of-the-art studio we just completed building after many months of design and construction. I am as excited about the potential reach and impact of this show as I have been about any new project in quite some time.
To begin with, we have full and complete editorial freedom and journalistic independence. While Rumble is enabling and providing the platform, budget and substantial promotional activities for our program, our show itself is not part of or subject to Rumble's corporate structure or managers. Rumble has no desire to be anything other than a content-neutral free speech platform, and it thus does not employ any editorial managers or supervisors to control or influence the content of what we produce, what we cover, or how we cover it.
As I learned from my experience at The Intercept, words in a contract only go so far: after all, I resigned from the Intercept shortly before the 2020 presidential election when its New-York-based liberal editors violated my contractual right to publish my articles directly to the internet without their prior review, approval or interference. They calculated that it was worth it to them to censor my work in violation of my contract with them — which barred them from blocking publication of my articles — because of how fearful they were that their liberal colleagues and friends would be angered by my publishing reporting shortly before the election that reflected poorly on Joe Biden, based on the Hunter Biden archive which Intercept editors, following the CIA, falsely called “Russian disinformation.”
But in addition to contractual guarantees from Rumble for full editorial freedom, I also know and trust the platform's founders and managers enough to believe they are genuinely committed to the free speech and free inquiry principles on which the entire company and its brand are predicated. I have seen them already strongly resist censorship pressures from both states and media outlets of the kind that has coerced bigger companies to capitulate, and I have little doubt about their intent to continue. For Rumble, it is not only an overarching cause but also central to their brand and business self-interest that they remain steadfast in their mission to create significant spaces on the internet that still foster free discourse and that are immune to the power of states and their media allies to try to coerce compliance with censorship commands.
This is how the show will work once we launch. We will broadcast the full one-hour show live on Rumble and, once that live show is concluded, we will immediately move to our dedicated group page on Locals — a community-based platform recently purchased by Rumble and which is now part of its platform — to engage in a 20-30 minute after-show exclusively with our subscribers. That after-show on Locals is designed to foster the audience interactivity I have always believed was the most important innovation of digital age media: it forced journalists to abandon the from-the-mountaintop monologue model, where they hand down pronouncements to a faceless crowd without ever being challenged, in favor of the dialogue model, where journalists are required (or, as I have always viewed it, able) to hear and respond to questions, critiques, ideas, and other forms of reaction from their audience.
Anyone who is already a paid subscriber to our Substack page here, or who becomes one, will have free and complete access to everything we do on both Rumble and Locals. There is no need to purchase any other subscriptions. Once we are ready to launch, you will receive a few emails asking if you want to opt-in to a free Locals subscription that will exist jointly with the one you already have here on Substack. However much time you have left on your existing Substack subscription will be the same amount of time you will receive free of charge on your new Locals subscription.
As I noted in the article on Friday, written journalism has always been the foundation of my reporting and still will be. This nightly broadcast on Rumble is intended to expand the reach of what we do here — especially by being able to communicate with people, including younger people — who do not want to consume news and commentary through written text but only through video. Beyond that, the advanced technological capabilities of the set we built will enable us to construct arguments and amass evidence in newly potent and convincing ways that mere written text cannot achieve. But as we already do for our current, periodic System Update videos on Rumble, we will continue to provide transcripts of each show for those who prefer to read rather than watch.
Beyond the bedrock free speech commitment of Rumble that I documented in Friday’s article, I am most excited about the very large audience size Rumble already has amassed: an audience that will only grow significantly as more and more people grow disenchanted with Big Tech repression, and as we and Rumble elevate our promotional activities for this new network of live shows. As I indicated on Friday, the videos we have been posting to Rumble — even while they are just sporadic, with no promotional activities behind them, and before the platform's most recent explosion in growth — have routinely produced audience sizes larger than most cable programs. Indeed, the impetus for this idea of a new network of live daily shows came when I spontaneously decided to broadcast live on Rumble about the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, and it attracted an ultimate audience size of close to 1.5 million people. This is what really excites me and makes me believe in the major potential of this platform to reach millions. I absolutely believe it can and will compete with and then surpass current standard television fare:
The new Rumble show was originally scheduled to launch last month on September 12. But I was not able to adhere to that September launch date, nor subsequently re-scheduled ones, because the health crisis in my family still prevents me from committing right now to producing a high-quality show five nights a week. While my husband continues to recuperate in ICU, we have decided for now to do a “soft-launch,” which — instead of appearing on Rumble — will first appear for a few weeks on Locals.
We intend for these shows that are part of the “soft-launch” to be a full show of the highest possible quality, not some lowered or partial form of what the ultimate show will be. By putting the show for a few weeks on Locals — where only our subscribers will have access — it will enable us to work out the kinks in the show, will allow me to take a few days off here and there when our family situation requires, and, most importantly, will give us an opportunity to hear and incorporate your feedback about what we can do differently and better.
Anyone who is currently a paid subscriber to Substack, or who becomes one, will be entitled to a full Locals subscription completely free of charge. This will enable you — beyond accessing my written work at Substack -- to have exclusive access to the first few weeks of the show. And, once the show launches on Rumble (which will be freely available to all the public to maximize audience size), you will continue to have full and free access to our after-show on Locals that is designed to foster audience participation. All paid Substack subscribers will begin receiving emails over the next few weeks asking if you want to opt-in, free of charge, to the Locals subscription (which will simply be in addition to the Substack subscription you already have). That will enable you to have unlimited access to everything we do on the Locals platforms, including full access to the "soft launch” of the show and then the after-show as well. I hope as many of you as possible opt-in to that new free subscription.
For current subscribers only, I am providing some photos below of the rehearsals we have been doing, as well as of the very modernized set we built and how we intend to use it: