Episode 8

♪♪ [ Suspenseful music plays ] [ Clock ticking ] ♪♪ -Ow.

♪♪ -Tonight on "Retro Report," understanding the present by revealing the past.

First, the way sex education is taught today has a long and controversial past.

-What if I want to have sex before I get married?

-Well, I guess you just have to be prepared to die.

-Are so many juveniles serving life in prison because of a myth from the 1990s?

-Predator.

-Superpredators.

-Superpredators.

-This country went into a moral panic.

-Then... -My very first HIV test came back positive, it was hell.

-The epidemic that many have forgotten, and the '90s startup that changed the way we consume media.

-It's called file sharing, seem by some as the wave of the future.

-Plus, Andy Borowitz, humorist for The New Yorker magazine, -Today, we take a close look at a vibrant industry.

-What are you looking at, butthead?

-Bullying.

♪♪ -I'm Celeste Headlee.

-And I'm Masud Olufani.

This is "Retro Report" on PBS.

-They have stunned the world.

-Time's up!

-Unusual.

-More secrets exposed.

♪♪ ♪♪ -What should schools teach kids about sex?

It's a controversial subject, raising questions about parents' rights and religious beliefs.

On one side, those wishing for an abstinence-only approach, which advocates no sex, ideally until marriage.

On the other side, those who want more comprehensive programs they say are better at preventing teen pregnancy.

-We've been debating this issue for decades, and today, thanks to the Internet and smart phones, the amount of information on this subject has exploded.

So as we look to the future of sex education, what can we learn from the conflicts of the past?

♪♪ -Deep in southern Georgia, in a region that has long grappled with the issue of teenage pregnancy, sits the small town of Cairo.

For the past few years, Daphne Melissa McClendon has been teaching sex education at the high school -We're gonna talk about contraception, okay?

Ways to prevent pregnancy.

Question: Why do men need that information?

At the beginning, it was difficult for me.

I did grapple with, you know, "I don't know that this is what I need to be doing," because I did feel like, "Hey, I'm a Christian.

I don't know that I believe in giving this kind of information out."

And I also didn't want them to think that I was saying, "Hey, it's okay to have sex."

-The question of what public schools should teach teens about sex has roiled communities around the country for decades, but the roots of today's sex ed conflicts lie in the 1990s, when the stakes of the debate were brought into sharp relief after years of high teen pregnancy rates and the spread of AIDS.

-An emotional new battle over sex education in public schools in this country.

-How much should children be told about safe sex, and is this a case of "the more you know, the more you do"?

-Today the U.S.

Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders, called for comprehensive health and sex education from kindergarten through 12th grade.

-I think I tick a lot of people off that refuse to deal openly and honestly about the predicament of our children today.

I feel that if you don't understand and can't control your reproduction, you can't control your life.

-While working in Arkansas, first as a doctor and then as the state health director, Joycelyn Elders came to embrace comprehensive sex education, age-appropriate, fact-based instruction on topics as varied as anatomy, relationships, and contraception.

-I always tell young women, you know, "Don't ever go out on a date with anybody you like without a condom in your purse."

-But backlash to Elders and the approach to sex ed she advocated for mounted quickly.

-With evangelistic fury she preaches that teenagers should have a love affair with the condom.

-They call them condoms because it's a con job and they're dumb.

And we feel like that's what we're telling kids.

They're being conned into believing that they can have safe sex.

They can't.

-A growing number of people felt instruction on birth control could prompt teens to have sex.

Instead, they felt young people should only be taught abstinence -- no sex at all until marriage.

-I think that abstinence has been lacking in much of the education.

-It was an idea first funded under the Reagan administration and supported in the years that followed by the increasingly influential religious right.

-The new curriculum says it emphasizes Christian morality and chastity.

-Teenagers are told there is no safe sex outside of marriage.

They are not taught contraception.

Instead, they are taught slogans like, "Control your urgin' and be a virgin," and "Pet your dog, not your date."

-They certainly were not the appropriate programs for the young people that I was accustomed to dealing with.

-It's kind of like you can think of it in terms of Russian Roulette.

What is it -- one in six that you're gonna die?

When you use a condom, it's like you're playing Russian Roulette.

-What if I want to have sex before I get married?

-Well, I guess you just have to be prepared to die.

-Every mother I know, every father I know, we all talk and support abstinence, but also we need to make sure that we educate our young people on how to protect themselves.

People will say, "Well, condoms will break."

But always remember that the vows of abstinence break far more easily than does latex condoms.

-This week, she went too far even for the President.

She said that children should be taught in school about masturbation.

-I think that, that is something that's a part of human sexuality, and it is a part of something that perhaps should be taught.

-President Clinton today fired his outspoken U.S.

Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders.

Mr. Clinton demanded and got her resignation... -If I had it all to do over again, I'd do it exactly the same way.

I did it right the first time.

-The ousting of Elders provided easy fodder for late-night television.

-If mashterbation is not taught in the ha-ome, then it must be taught in the schools.

-But it also signaled a shift in the national mood as a Republican majority took control of Congress in 1994 and abstinence-only gained political ground.

-The best thing of all is for teens to avoid sex, and I was hoping it would be possible to promote that by programs in the high schools.

I thought we ought to try it.

I thought it was a worthy investment.

-When President Clinton signed the Welfare Reform Act, it included a provision on abstinence, which Ron Haskins helped draft.

It provided federal funds for states to teach programs under a strict definition of abstinence-only.

-It's a symbol of this is something that the federal government supports, and we should support it among the states, and it could grow.

And that was what the people who supported this legislature had in mind -- to start a movement, so to speak.

-I told Bill Clinton that of all the things that he'd done, that was the one thing that I would never forgive him for.

I was very upset about that.

I'm still upset about it.

-What you saw was a lot of local communities -- that really wanted this education -- for the very first time were able to implement it.

-Mary Anne Mosack ran an Ohio-based abstinence-only organization that received an injection of federal funds as the political climate grew even friendlier.

-Abstinence for young people is the only certain way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.

-That was a very good time for us in terms of expanding our message and our programming.

-But over the years, researchers had been evaluating abstinence-only.

One multiyear study released in 2007 compared students who had gone through federally-funded abstinence-only programs with their classmates who had not.

-When I first saw the report, I was amazed.

They would show the score for the experimental group and a score for the control group, and those bar graphs were just exactly the same height.

-The study found that students who took part in the programs became sexually active at the same age as those who didn't and had about the same number of sexual partners.

-I would describe myself as discouraged about abstinence-only.

Most of the evidence shows that the more comprehensive programs are more effective.

-There is a lot of evidence about what kinds of programs work.

The scientific consensus is really there.

-Leslie Kantor, a sexual health researcher and longtime advocate of sex education points to findings that have repeatedly shown that comprehensive sex ed has significant effects on delaying teen sex, reducing sexually transmitted infections and teen pregnancies, and increasing the use of contraception.

-It turns out that when you give young people information as well as the skills that they're going to need to navigate in relationships, th ose are the young people who are actually able to wait longer to have sex.

-Governors began rejecting some of the federal abstinence money.

-Congress spent more than $1.5 billion on abstinence-only sex education, an approach many now call a failure.

-And with the Obama administration came a large-scale effort to fund the programs with the most scientific evidence behind them.

-It really was the first time, in this area at least, when the government was actually starting to bring science to bear.

-But sex ed is ultimately a state and local issue, and there are striking differences in what's taught in schools around the country and whether certain topics are covered at all.

-What you actually end up seeing is that we are teaching less about birth control as a country than we did before all of this abstinence-only money came into play.

If we have increasing evidence of a body of programs that works, then why wouldn't we get behind those evidence-based programs?

-The Trump administration has prioritized abstinence-only, now being referred to as sexual risk avoidance, and while some of these programs now include some information on contraception, their underlying message remains essentially the same -- Teens should avoid sex, hopefully until marriage.

-We're guiding you toward risk elimination, risk avoidance to eliminate risk.

So when I'm talking about about contraception, I'm giving you all the information, but I'm also putting into context that the only 100% safe way to avoid pregnancy or STD is sexual risk avoidance.

It's interesting because sometimes students don't ever hear that message that they don't have to have sex.

-The idea that abstinence-only is a fabulous idea is an ideology.

It's not supported by good data.

I'm concerned that if we have public debates that are based on ideology, that we're not gonna make public decisions based on evidence and experience.

That's what we should try to do.

-Cairo, Georgia, is trying to do just that.

A group of women had begun meeting regularly to discuss the issues they faced locally.

-We had religious people, non-religious people, very liberal, very conservative all come together to say, "What can we do as women to make a difference in Grady County?"

-One night, the subject of teen pregnancy came up.

-One of us arrived late.

She goes, "It's been a day.

In a community I was in just northwest of here, there are three 10-year-olds pregnant.

What can we do?"

As we got to talking, everybody knew a story.

Everybody knew somebody affected.

-Nationally since the 1990s, teen pregnancy rates have declined dramatically.

Teens are having less sex today than in the past, and more are using contraception when they do.

But some communities, like Grady County, are still challenged by the problems of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, and the Cairo women viewed comprehensive sex ed as part of the solution.

-When you put the data on the table about what's happening to our kids, political barriers go away.

-Teresa Gee Hardy, a school board member long involved with the church, helped get pastors and faith-based organizations on board with the idea.

-There's a scripture that talks about "my people perish because a lack of knowledge."

Teens suffer because of lack of knowledge.

Teen pregnancy rate is high because of lack of knowledge.

-Grady County is now in the fifth year of its comprehensive sex ed program, and according to the district superintendent, feedback from teachers and students has been positive.

-Let's look at what we talked about yesterday -- relationships, healthy and unhealthy relationship tests.

I think my role is to give them the information to make sure that they understand that I'm not judging them, but I want them to be informed, and I want them to be empowered.

-I think our community can be a model in the sense that, yes, this is scary.

Yes, we're very conservative.

Yes, we're very Christian.

But yes, we're looking out for what's best for our kids.

♪♪ -Today the criminal justice system is in the midst of a painful reckoning as states determine whether the life sentences of more than 2,000 people should be reconsidered.

That's because they were given mandatory life terms as juveniles, which the Supreme Court has since ruled unconstitutional.

So how did so many kids get life behind bars in the first place?

-It was a trend that took off in the '80s and '90s, when fear of teenage crime was at a fever pitch.

Criminologists were warning about a supposed new breed of remorseless teen killers -- so-called "superpredators."

Along this stretch of grassy road one night in early September 1994, when most grade schoolers were getting ready for a new school year, a grisly murder took place.

-In Chicago, the body of an 11-year-old gang member, nicknamed "Yummy," is found beneath an underpass.

-Police say Robert was murdered by two members of his own gang -- 16-year-old Craig Hardaway and his younger brother.

-Derrick Hardaway was 14 when he and his brother drove to the underpass to kill Robert Sandifer, or "Yummy."

Sandifer himself had shot and killed a teenage girl before he was murdered.

Derrick waited in the car while Craig pulled the trigger.

-I remember the night when things took place.

He got a page from a guy named Kenny.

I'm not actually sure what he said to my brother, but... it was to kill Robert.

-Derrick and his older brother belonged to Chicago's Black Disciples gang.

-If I was told to do certain things, even if I didn't want to do it, it was either... do what I'm being told or have it done to me.

-Robert Sandifer's murder was big news.

"The story scared people," says criminologist Barry Krisberg.

-This was no longer a Chicago story.

This was a story that, no matter where you lived, you turned on the evening news and you would hear about this case.

-By now, nearly all of us know the story of Robert Sandifer.

-There was a sense that the country writ large was going to hell in a hand basket.

-No one had a clear idea of what to do.

-Political scientist John DiIulio taught at Princeton and had done extensive research in prison, studying the criminal justice system.

From 1984 to 1994, when Sandifer was killed, teenage homicide rates had more than doubled.

-It seemed like there was a high-profile, major, heinous crime in the news almost every day or every week -- random senseless violence.

-Teenage killers -- The homicide rate for juveniles now has surpassed the rate for adults in this country.

-DiIulio looked at studies hat estimated that by 2000, there would be 1 million more teens between the ages of 14 and 17, and he predicted crime rates would snowball even more.

-You'd have a doubling or a tripling in the rate of youth violence in the time between the mid-'90s and up to, through, mid-2000s.

-Perhaps most troubling to DiIulio was what he saw as an indication that the small percentage of kids who commit the most violent crimes would be much more destructive than a generation before them.

-Studies found that essentially 6% of every male youth cohort was responsible for about 50% of all the violent crimes committed by that cohort.

That small fraction of people was gonna be able to wreak incredible havoc.

-DiIulio wasn't the only one predicting a surge in crime.

-By the year 2005, we may very well have a bloodbath of teenage violence.

-Northeastern University criminologist James Fox says his choice of words was deliberate.

-I did sound an alarm, and I did use some rather strong language in terms of what might happen if we didn't react quickly.

-Fox and DiIulio felt compelled to call attention to this perceived problem.

DiIulio, an Ivy League academic from South Philadelphia, wrote this article for the Weekly Standard in 1995.

-The term "superpredator" originated from an inmate who said -- it was almost a throwaway line.

He said, "You know, these kids, they're stone-cold predators."

-A superpredator is a young, juvenile criminal who is so impulsive, so remorseless, that he can kill, rape, maim without giving it a second thought.

-And like a match to a flame, the word caught on.

-Superpredator.

-Predator.

-Predators.

-Superpredators.

-Linguist Ben Zimmer is the language columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

-When you use a word like predator, it is loaded with certain assumptions about the way that an animal hunts another animal, and so to call someone a superpredator really amps that up even more.

-We're talking about a group of kids who are growing up essentially fatherless, godless, and jobless.

-DiIulio says that he wasn't pointing to any particular racial group as being the most potentially violent, but in 1996, he wrote that, "As many as half of these juvenile superpredators could be young Black males."

-Race was the central issue.

That as the number of minority children -- principally African-American but also Latino children -- that to the extent that that number was increasing in the society, with them would come a big crime increase.

-What's required in moral panic is the identification of a particular group of people who are demonized in some way.

-When you describe another group as godless, you can do anything to them.

-Lawmakers seized the moment to spur on the overhaul of a legal system they considered too lax.

-Kids that once stole hubcaps now rape and murder -- no fear of punishment.

Experts call them superpredators.

-They are not just gangs of kids anymore.

They are often the kinds of kids that are called superpredators -- no conscience, no empathy.

-There are no violent offenses that are juvenile.

You rape somebody, you're an adult.

You shoot somebody, you're an adult.

-Virtually every state -- almost 45 states -- enacted laws cracking down on juvenile offenders, making it easier to prosecute youth in adult criminal courts, increase penalties... -But at the same time the laws were being enacted, juvenile crimes rates were already starting to show a surprising trend.

-Juvenile crime rates have been plummeting during this period of time in the wake of this panic.

-The drop in juvenile crime has been attributed to many things -- a stronger economy, better policing, a decline in crack cocaine use.

But DiIulio's research had not foreseen any of these trends.

-We were, you know, on the precipice of being able to explain and predict all kinds of things -- poverty trends, crime trends, and so forth.

None of that work, no ne of those predictions in any of those fields have borne fruit.

-By the late 1990s, after a steady decline in juvenile crime, DiIulio can see just how mistaken he was.

-The predictions were off by a factor of 4.

It had doubled, and it was supposed to double again, and instead it was halved.

Alright?

And so, that's about as far off as one could possibly get.

The superpredator idea was wrong.

Once it was out there, though, it was out there.

There was no reeling it in.

-The experience was a turning point.

DiIulio would go on to work in the Bush administration as director of faith-based and community initiatives.

-I lost faith in social science prediction at about the same time that I gained faith of a traditional religious kind.

I went to religion and public affairs for the same reason I went to crime and corrections policies.

I thought that's where the most important issues and where the most good could be done.

-But Krisberg says DiIulio's turnaround came too late to reverse the damage.

-It was a myth, and unfortunately it was a myth that some academics jumped onto.

The fear over the superpredator led to a tremendous number of laws and policies that we're just now recovering from.

-In 2012, a case challenging mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles made it to the Supreme Court.

I brief filed in support of the case denounced the superpredator theory.

It was a public repudiation, yet Fox and DiIulio both signed on.

-So I signed the amicus brief.

I thought that, although the arguments were a bit one-sided, it came to the right conclusion, and so I signed it because at the end of the day, it's what's gonna matter most -- What did you do, and why did you do it, and did it make a positive difference?

-The Supreme Court agreed with DiIulio's side.

-"Automatic, mandatory life sentences," the Justices said, "amount to cruel and unusual punishment."

-The Court recently ruled that decision would apply retroactively to more than 2,000 people already serving mandatory life sentences for crimes they committed as juveniles... -I made a bad choice.

-...citing research showing that teenagers' brains aren't fully developed, making them less culpable for their actions.

-The Justices wrote that a young person's immaturity reduces their accountability.

Juveniles have an inability to assess consequences, are often rash, and are prone to risk-taking, things that should be considered when sentencing.

-In 2016, Derrick Hardaway was released on parole after serving nearly 20 years in prison for his role in the death of Robert Sandifer.

-When I got sentenced, being told you got to do more time in prison than you've actually lived at that time, that's harsh, especially for a 16-year-old to accept.

-John DiIulio has worked with three White House administrations to try to implement faith-based initiatives in needy communities, but he says he's out of the business of forecasting.

-Demography is not fate, and criminology is not pure science, and that lesson, I think -- This episode from 20 years ago and I think many, many other things in public policy -- I mean, that we should carve that in stone and put it above every research institution and every foundation.

♪♪ -President Donald Trump has announced an ambitious goal to end the HIV epidemic in this country by 2030.

-Today we have many of the tools necessary to end the epidemic, but not everyone has equal access to them.

So where do we go from here?

There may be lessons to be found in a young boy's story from more than three decades ago, early in the AIDS crisis.

Jupiter Adams is part of a silent epidemic.

-My very first HIV test came back positive.

It was hell.

Like, the first two months, I couldn't talk to nobody.

I couldn't do anything.

I didn't hear about HIV.

First time I heard about it was in a history class where they were talking about the ACT UP movement, so I told everybody I thought it was like the Bubonic Plague.

I thought it came, it left, so I didn't worry about it.

-"Public awareness about HIV has faded, and that's contributing to a health crisis today," says Dr. Larry Mass, an AIDS activist for nearly four decades.

-I wish they could go on indefinitely, thinking, "Oh, those old guys and then all that old stuff, we don't have to deal with that."

This history is not just history.

It's them, and it's situations that they're facing today.

-That history goes back to the early days of the epidemic in the 1980s, when the public often reacted with prejudice, if they acknowledged the disease at all.

-The setup was that this disease was something striking almost totally undesirables.

-It appeared a year ago in New York's gay community.

-Investigators have examined the habits of homosexuals for clues.

-To some traditionalists, AIDS is a gay plague.

-Gays, drug addicts, injection, heroin addicts... -At the very least, there should be a quarantine of all homosexuals, drug abusers, and prostitutes.

-This is their disease.

Ordinary, everyday heterosexuals, normal people, have nothing to worry about.

-Scientists believe AIDS is not likely to spread beyond these groups, but it is still a deadly epidemic.

-It was the dark years.

It was terrible.

People were dying at a very high rate.

The hospice facilities were filled with people.

We had no therapy at all, so it was, like, unfortunately, putting Band-Aids on hemorrhages.

-More than 1,500 cases have been discovered so far, and most experts believe there will be more than 3,000 by the end of the year.

-People were very secretive because it was extremely stigmatizing.

-I've had friends tell me to go and die, "Just get away and go and die."

-Although federal health authorities found no evidence of transmission through casual contact, public concern remained high.

And as the epidemic spread, so did the fear.

-40,000 Americans will get AIDS this year and next.

-One out of seven people polled said they would favor tattooing all AIDS victims, better than half said they should be quarantined, and nearly as many would require anyone who tests positive for AIDS antibodies to carry an ID card.

-Then in 1985, AIDS came to a small Indiana town.

-It was last Christmas that Ryan White, a hemophiliac, learned that because of a blood transfusion, he had contracted AIDS.

-Ryan was just playful, silly, loved skateboarding and pretty carefree, and he was very well aware that his life was going to be cut short.

He just wanted to attend school and be with his friends like everybody else does.

-But local school officials barred the 13-year-old from returning to middle school, and some concerned parents fought to keep him out.

Lawyer David Rosselot represented them.

-People were very panicked.

We don't know anything about this disease.

The only thing we know that if you have it, you're gonna die.

-I think we have to prove that there's beyond a shadow of a doubt that my child is not gonna be infected with this.

-Ryan had no control over getting AIDS, and we've just had to fight for it seems like everything, and now we'll just have to keep on fighting.

-When a court eventually ruled in Ryan's favor, some protests turned ugly.

-There were, like, a picket line at school -- It's the only way I can describe it -- of people in scrubs and Halloween masks and signs, like, telling him to die.

Just hurling insults, screaming at him and his family.

-But the coverage of his story turned Ryan White into a symbol of resilience.

-And finally this evening, our Person of the Week -- the young boy who learned, when he was 13, that he had a terminal illness.

-Ryan was singled out by the governor of the state as a model of courage and inner strength.

-Every time you'd turn on the TV, you turn the news on, there's a picture Ryan.

It just seemed like everywhere you looked, there were celebrities that were speaking out.

-I don't think he wanted the role that he was put in, but at the same time that he saw how much people needed to be educated.

-Ryan's success at reaching the public highlighted how much other voices had been ignored.

-Ryan White was a figure who, in fairly short order, began to elicit public sympathy.

It was difficult to just say, "Those nasty faggots."

Ryan White was the innocent victim.

Well, does that imply that the others were the guilty, deserving recipients?

-Hey, hey!

Ho, ho!

Ronald Reagan's got to go!

Hey, hey!

-Activists from the gay community, including members of the ACT UP movement, had been pressing the Reagan administration to help those with the disease.

-The fact that it has taken the president five years to begin to even address this problem publicly demonstrates that this administration hasn't given it the level of commitment that it deserves.

-As more people went public with their stories of contracting AIDS, Americans' understanding of the crisis was broadening, a door Ryan White had helped open.

-You know, people just aren't listening, and we have to make them listen.

-You had a young boy who turned the knob a bit to get people to say, "The enemy here is the virus.

The enemy is not the person who has been infected."

-When Ryan died in 1990, more than 1,500 mourners attended his funeral, including David Rosselot, the lawyer who had fought to keep him out of school.

-I knew I had to say goodbye, if for no other reason than to be able to say, you know, "This wasn't about you.

I hope you forgive me."

-The story of AIDS began to change.

Congress pushed through the Ryan White Care Act, bipartisan legislation aimed at providing care for people with HIV and AIDS, and soon, new drug regimens offered a sense of hope.

-It was when we got the effective drugs that it was really a transformation -- I mean, completely a transformation in how we looked at HIV.

-People are gonna live longer, healthier, more productive lives and be able to live with HIV.

-As the years went by, we had better and better drugs.

We have now drugs which will bring the virus down to below detectable level, which not only saves the life of the person, but makes it essentially impossible for that person to transmit the virus to a sexual partner.

-And for those at risk of getting HIV, there's a daily medication called "Pre-exposure Prophylaxis," or "PrEP."

-PrEP has been clearly shown, if you take a single pill once a day, you decrease the likelihood that you would acquire HIV infection.

So if you put those two things together, you could theoretically essentially end the epidemic quickly.

-But despite these medical advances, HIV infections have continued to spread.

-The fact is that HIV is not an equal-opportunity virus.

Everyone can get infected, but everyone is not getting infected.

-Just like in the early days of the epidemic, it's striking populations who are often overlooked, this time -- communities of color, particularly across the Deep South.

"And once again," Dr. Mass says, "the public isn't paying attention."

-There's a tendency to look at these Black and Hispanic rural communities in the South as marginal.

It's the same kind of thinking that we had early on.

The thing is when you don't deal with marginalized communities or issues, they have a way of becoming forefront.

-The places where the epidemic is growing are in those communities where people of color typically have not had access to resources, where poverty sits.

-Cindy Watson works with LBGTQ Youth in Jacksonville, Florida, which has one of the highest rates of new HIV diagnoses in the country.

-We have these pills, but if people can't get access to them, if their lives are not stable and in a place where they can continue to take them over time, they don't have the benefit of the medication and of living with a chronic illness.

And they're also infectious.

-Watson and colleagues help young people navigate the medical system and get access to costly drugs for HIV treatment and prevention.

-Given my own identity as a queer person of color, I know the turbulence that comes with people trying to navigate systems, so many systems.

-While access the testing and medication is vital, Jackson says continued education is also needed to counteract deep-seated stigma and misinformation.

-I just think what's passed down for generations what's passed down from, like, stereotypes and myths.

That has a more lasting effect, unfortunately.

But the more education that we push, the more that we're able to flip the script and change the narrative.

-We have the tools to do things that we never imagined we could do before.

Are we implementing these tools to the maximum?

We've gone from being in the dark and a terrible, terrible disease to now being able to not only save lives, but to actually end this terrible scourge.

-Like it's never really a wrong time to have the conversation... -"Ending the epidemic," Dr. Fauci says, "will also require a new generation of activists."

People like Jupiter Adams.

-I was once inside of that position, where I didn't know -- where I didn't know it was an epidemic.

The only thing I can do is do what I would have wanted someone to do with me.

I want to save as many people as I can.

Me and my status, we have an understanding that we are going to go very far together.

♪♪ ♪♪ -These days, we take for granted that, with a couple of clicks on our phones, tablets, or laptops, we can instantly stream or download our favorite TV shows, movies, and songs.

But this easy access direct to the consumer, and sometimes even for free, isn't new.

-It all began two decades ago with a pesky startup in a college dorm.

The disrupter was a file sharing program called Napster.

With it, you could download and share music for free.

The record industry didn't like it, Napster wound up in court, and the startup didn't last long.

But it had sounded the first shot that the way we consume media, not just music, was about to change dramatically.

At the 2019 Academy Awards, "Roma," by acclaimed director Alfonso Cuarón, took home three Oscars.

-Roma.

-But the film's significance wasn't merely measured in trophies.

For many, it marked a turning point for the American motion picture industry.

-Roma is a Netflix streaming platform production, one few people saw in an actual cinema.

-That really sparked a debate in Hollywood as to what constitutes a film.

There's a lot of traditionalists that see a film as something you go to a theater, you see it on a big screen.

The Napster experience for the music business shows the futility of trying to fight an innovation that people are clearly embracing.

-The year was 1998.

Will Smith and Shania Twain dominated the pop charts.

Ben Affleck and Cameron Diaz were the big draws at the box office, and tens of million tuned in for the final episode of "Seinfeld."

-Why don't you just blow it out your... -Okay, yeah.

-And in a dorm room at Northeastern University in Boston, a freshman named Shawn Fanning had an idea for a computer program.

-I first started engaging with Shawn online over instant messenger, through his username Napster.

The conversation went something like Shawn saying, "Hey, I've started creating this service to help people find music."

He was insistent that this was gonna be huge, and he might make a lot of money out of it.

My response to him was, "You need to just concentrate on your studies."

-Fanning didn't follow Aydar's advice.

He dropped out to focus on the program and partnered with fellow teenage programmer Sean Parker to release a beta version.

As it started to spread through chat rooms, they traveled to the Bay Area to grow the business.

-Initially, I was skeptical that, "Gosh, I'm sitting across from two 18- or 19-year-olds."

I changed my tune once I learned that there were already 40,000 people using this thing.

-Fanning called the program Napster, after his online username.

Over the Internet, it allowed users to access music files stored on the hard drives of fellow Napster users.

-40,000 wasn't a big number, but it was bigger than what I thought it was gonna be initially, which was zero because people weren't willing to open up their hard drives.

What I realized was that people's emotional ties to music, their general interest in music, was more than enough to overwhelm any kind of security or privacy concern.

-It was on college campuses with high-speed Internet that Napster really took off in the fall of 1999.

-So how many MP3s do you have on your computer?

-About 600.

-Maybe like 100 or something?

-6,000 or 7,000.

-Napster.

-Napster.

-Napster.

-It's called file sharing, seen by some as the wave of the future.

-But not everyone was cheering Napster's rise.

-College students are making good use of the Internet.

The latest software makes it a bit too easy for students to access their favorite tunes.

-No longer do you have to go to a store and plunk down money.

-From '84 to 2000, the music industry made so much freaking money selling CDs.

First it was hair bands, and then it was grunge bands, and then it was boy bands.

-♪ I want it that way ♪ -I mean, it was a great time to be in the business -- 1999.

You know, you had two or three records come out in one week, sell 1 million records.

-You actually had to drive your car to the Tower Records and buy a CD for $18 to get the one song you liked, and so that was a good model.

It made the industry tons and tons of cash.

-♪ I get knocked down ♪ ♪ But I get up again ♪ -Selling millions of Chumbawumba albums with one good song was an economic boom.

-It didn't take long for the music industry to take notice something was afoot.

Months after Napster's rise, industry executives began a legal battle to stop it.

-They're waging a war in the courts over who controls what artists create.

-To record companies whose artists range from Tony Bennett to Metallica, this new technology in the wrong hands is simply stealing.

-Napster hijacked our music without asking.

-A business model built on infringement is not only morally wrong, but legally wrong.

-Illegally downloading music is the same thing as going into a CD store and stealing a CD.

-We felt pretty strongly that digital distribution was going to bring the industry closer to its customer, and instead of killing it, they would take advantage of the value that it brought.

-We've heard that we couldn't survive before when we had 700,000 members and when we had 17 million members.

-A chorus of studies show that Napster users buy more records as a result of using Napster.

-We wanted it to be an industry-supported service that would be a successful business.

We tried to make sure that the record industry could understand how this could beneficial to them, but it was very clear to me from the early going that they were really loath to license Napster.

-Anybody with enough money could go and make a record, but that didn't guarantee you getting into stores, which was the only place that you could actually buy that record.

That was the power of the music business -- the distribution.

The industry went wrong, in trying to hold onto that distribution channel and those chains and not trying to find a solution to what was obvious was coming in the future.

-In July of 2001, after more than a year of legal battles, the record industry got its wish.

-The free music service run by Napster was ordered to stop the music.

-Napster, which at its peak had about 70 million registered users, was shut down due to court orders.

But while the industry may have defeated Napster, the idea had taken hold.

-A flurry of other downloading services took its place.

Desperate to stem the tide, the labels upped the stakes and sued almost 20,000 people for using illegal downloading software.

-Do you feel like you're being made some sort of a test case here?

-Yeah.

-But CD sales continued to plummet, shuttering record stores across the country.

-An industry in turmoil.

-So, when Steve Jobs came to the table with plans for a new online music store, the major labels finally surrendered.

-You had only two choices.

Either you don't do a deal with Steve, in which case people continue to just e-mail the MP3s to their friends, or you do a business with him.

And he has a store, and then you can sell things.

-And as online streaming services like Spotify and YouTube gained popularity, the music industry realized it was better to partner than fight them.

In recent years, streaming revenues have provided the industry's first real sign of positive growth since the pre-Napster days.

-Streaming is rapidly changing how media is bought, how it's consumed, who profits from it, and even how much is made.

-But for mid-tier artists who once benefited from album sales, the payouts from streaming can be slim.

-The top 1% generate most of the revenue.

Hopefully more will be able to earn a living as time goes on, but it is ever more challenging.

-And as for record labels, the opportunity for them to be leaders in online distribution had long passed.

-They didn't take the time to really understand what was going on and think about the future implications of it 'cause it was clear to us if we didn't exist, something else was gonna exist.

The whole reason why there are so many people using this service is because this is how people want to access their music.

-The lessons of Napster are resonating today as another established industry -- television and film -- faces the same existential challenges.

-When the music industry was in the depth of the legal fight with Napster, smart people were looking at the film and TV industries and saying, "You're next.

Just wait till the Internet speeds and capabilities get fast enough so that you can distribute a movie or a TV show."

-That day is here.

Nearly 70 million American households now stream movies and TV shows from an Internet-connected device.

-What Napster introduced America to was the idea that you could have a very large menu of content at your fingertips, and you could hit a button and get that delivered.

In Hollywood, the move toward direct-to-consumer business models has been incredibly disruptive.

You're talking about an industry that has functioned basically the same way for about a century.

-And a new study predicts revenues from online streaming services like Netflix and Hulu will outpace movie theater box office receipts in 2019.

-There's a tendency to be so engrained in an industry that you don't see the potential for innovation, for improvement.

Right now Hollywood is in the throes of a very, kind of, fast and furious reaction to what's clearly been embraced by consumers about the Netflix model.

-Disney is taking on Netflix with its own streaming service, and it's called Disney+.

-Today with TV and film companies navigating the Internet revolution in real time, Napster's impact on the music industry is a reminder of the peril of taking too long to embrace the future.

-We've had a massive change, massive.

I mean, we haven't seen anything like it since, you know, the invention of the printing press.

There are gonna be many, many new and wonderful ways to exploit, enjoy, distribute creative works.

We just have to be open to them.

♪♪ -Some American industries are struggling today, but one is doing better than ever.

-New Yorker humorist Andy Borowitz explains.

-Mass destruction.

-Sexual relations.

-Potato.

-Fear.

-[chanting] USA!

-Aah!

-Hello.

-Aw, [buzzer] damn it.

-None of it makes sense.

-Maybe you guys should get a sense of humor.

-[Laughing] -I knew this is gonna wind up in a crazy place.

[ Rock chords striking ] ♪♪ -Today we take a close look at a vibrant industry.

-What are you looking at, butthead?

-Bullying.

In 1987, Morton Downey Jr. discovered that Americans had an unquenchable thirst for seeing their fellow citizens brutalized.

-Ugly slob.

You jerk.

Shut up.

-Why don't you shut up?

-Why don't you shut up?

-If I had a slime like you in the White House, I'd puke on you!

-Oh, yeah?

-Downey's unique management style made him a star until... -It was a downer of an evening for Morton Downey Jr. Downey claims skinheads attacked him, swastikas drawn.

-They cut my hair off and then said, "Now you're one of us.

Sieg Heil."

-The trouble was not over for Downey.

Sharp-eyed forensic experts noticed that Downey's swastika was drawn backwards, suggesting he'd painted it himself in a mirror in a bid to keep up his ratings.

-San Francisco airport police and spokesmen don't believe Downey.

-There were no skinheads to be found in the area.

-Airport officials say that they think the so-called attack was self-inflicted for publicity.

-Despite Morton Downey Jr.'s impressive legacy... he was relegated to the overflowing ashtray of history, leaving an opening in the market for a new bully.

-[ Audience chanting "Jerry!"]

-Jerry Springer improved on Downey's creation by outsourcing the job of bullying to his studio audience.

-Questions for the mother -- What street corner can I find you on?

-My question's for Stuart Little over there.

-That -- That nasty bitch up there.

-No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

-You need to watch your attitude 'cause I'm not the one.

-No, no, come on.

Come on.

-Classical scholars were quick to recognize Jerry's profound debt to ancient Roman theater.

-[ Audience chanting "Jerry!"]

-Sensing that viewers were tired of watching their fellow Americans abuse each other within the confines of a TV studio, savvy television innovator Mark Burnett was not afraid to spread the gospel.

-We are proud to be Christians.

-No, not that Gospel.

-Burnett spread the word about bullying.

He made tiki torches mainstream in a move that would spread tormenting to the four corners of the Earth.

-You are an unemployed, uneducated leech on society.

-Shut up.

-If I were to ever pass you, and you were laying there dying of thirst, I would not give you a drink of water.

-Bullying the whole family could enjoy equaled ratings magic, so Mark Burnett set out to do another show, recruiting some random guy that Morton Downey Jr. knew... -Donald Trump.

-...who shared Downey's knack for insulting people, but had way more business sense.

-You're fired.

You're fired.

You're fired.

I feel good about it.

-"The Apprentice" was sociopathic ratings gold.

Now, you could say that Mark Burnett made a bad call by promoting bullying, but Burnett doesn't report to you.

He answers to a higher authority -- NBC head-honcho Jeff Zucker.

When cable news channels started to get into the bullying game, Zucker decided to head to CNN in time for a series of top-rated, prime time bullying specials.

-I never attacked him on his look, and believe me, there's plenty of subject matter.

More energy tonight.

I like that.

She can't run any of my companies.

That I can tell you.

This guy's a joke artist, and this guy's a liar.

-As his competitors were voted off the island one by one, a little-known Slovenian activist moved in on her target, plotting to take down bullying once and for all.

She claimed to be an expert.

-I could say I'm the most bullied person on the world.

-So she made an attempt to stop bullying in its tracks.

-Today, I'm very excited to announce "Be Best."

-The bullying empire was under attack, but luckily Trump's PR guy had lots of practice defending bullying, and he came out on top.

-You are a rude, terrible person.

A loser, she doesn't know what the hell she's doing.

What a stupid question.

-[ Audience chanting "Jerry!"

] -[ Crowd chanting "Lock her up!"

] [ Indistinct shouting ] -It's time to stop bullying bullying, an industry that's created jobs, profits, and a bold, new style of national leadership.

I see a bright future where even anti-bullies have to admit bullies rule.

-I miss it.

I honest to God miss it.

♪♪ -History is full of surprises if you know where to look.

-"Retro Report" on PBS.

Thanks for watching.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -This program is available on Amazon Prime Video.

♪♪