Watching the Hawks: Power-trio hatch new RT show to test MSM
A trio of self-proclaimed revolutionaries is vowing to bring a new kind of talk show to the airways. Sean Stone, Tyrel Ventura and Tabetha Wallace make up a new generation of co-hosts on RT America’s ‘Watching the Hawks’, a new current events show.
“We sit down and really go through stories, instead of sort of that break-neck pace of the regular [news],” Wallace told RT’s Larry King for an upcoming episode of ‘Politicking’, adding that the three co-hosts focus on context and the broader pictures as much as they do on the facts of the story.
“We kind of see it from all of our perspectives. And we don’t always agree on things, but we have always naturally been people who can disagree and still have a conversation and walk out learning more about each other and about the world,” Wallace said. “And we’re trying to bring a little of that ‒ what we have naturally ‒ to the air instead of everybody yelling at each other.”
Are you ready for the premiere of Watching The Hawks on @RT_America tonight at 6PM EST? #QuestionMore
— Watching The Hawks (@WatchingHawks) March 23, 2015
The three ‒ who founded the online news and interview show ‘Buzzsaw’ together ‒ have their own unique perspectives. Wallace brings a blue-collar perspective to the group, as the daughter of an elementary school janitor. Meanwhile, Stone is the son of Hollywood director and conspiracy theorist Oliver Stone. And Ventura's point-of-view was largely shaped by his father, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura – a noted political independent and conspiracy theorist in his own right.
“The idea of the ‘conspiracy theorist’ and that kind of thing has been turned into this ugly term, when in truth it’s simply just asking questions, searching for the truth and there’s nothing wrong ‒ my dad inspired the hell out of me,” Ventura said.
‘Watching the Hawks’ isn’t just about cynicism towards political warhawks, however. It’s about providing an outsider’s view towards anyone hawking their wares to the younger generation.
“You have this media that’s sort of selling to us and selling to us, and nobody’s really taking a step back and looking at what affect that has on it,” Wallace said. “And you know, we don’t want to be sold into a political party, we don’t want to be sold into something, we want to have a conversation, and we’re not seeing that anywhere else.”
Stone believes ‘Watching the Hawks’ provides millennials with a unique perspective on the news – one that’s geared towards them.
“I think that’s part of the attraction of having young news commentators because you look around at most of the networks and I think there is this realization of ‘Wait a minute, we’re losing the young audience, and so how do we appeal to them?’” he told King. In the three co-hosts, he thinks RT America has found “young voices who have a different perspective on everything, from the political process to ‒ as we talked about ‒ conspiracy theory to world geopolitics.”
Ventura agreed, noting that millennials “were born after all these events where they can very easily see that their government doesn’t tell them the whole truth at times, or corporations are ‒ like Tabetha said ‒ constantly marketing to them.”
“CNN, to me, just feels like it’s the official mouth of the State Department, no matter who’s in power. And Fox plays to its right-wing base, MSNBC plays to [the left-wing base], and I think the millennials as a whole don’t want to fall in and don’t want to be categorized to certain specific groups,” Ventura added. “They want to do their own independent thinking.”
‘Watching the Hawks’ asks its viewers to come to their own conclusions on the current events of the day. It premieres Monday, March 23 at 6 p.m. ET on RT America. The half-hour show airs Mondays through Thursdays in that time slot. Follow the show on Facebook and on Twitter.
