--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, January 24th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the problems with delivering mental health care virtually. Ticketmaster appears before Congress to answer for the Taylor Swift failures and its market power. And Qi Hui Kwan's career from child actor to award season favorite. But first, at least seven people are dead in Half Moon Bay, California, in a mass shooting that comes just days after the one in Monterey Park.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Both involve suspects who were older men of Asian descent with unclear motives. And both have Asian-American communities on edge after enduring years of increased violence and harassment during the pandemic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Half Moon Bay shootings yesterday happened at two agriculture sites. Investigators believe the suspected shooter worked at one of them. He was taken into police custody. The victims reportedly included Chinese-American farm workers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A spokesperson for the family-owned farm said their hearts go out to victims, families, and Asian-Americans in both California communities. San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus says some of the victims were shot by the 67-year-old man in front of young kids. It was in the afternoon when kids were out of school. And for children to witness this is unspeakable.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There have been at least 38 mass shootings in America this month, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The two most recent ones in California are sending fresh shockwaves through Asian American communities that have experienced more violence and hate crimes in the past few years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Racist misinformation about COVID led to a lot of suffering in Asian American communities. Stores lost business as tourists stayed away from these neighborhoods. People reported increasing abuse, ranging from racist comments to attacks on the elderly.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Although the suspects in these shootings were Asian, it doesn't change the fact that people still feel terrorized. And they have for a long time. There are disturbing questions, fear, and a lot of grief right now.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But people are also stopping to recognize bravery. We're learning more and more about what happened in the Monterey Park shootings last weekend.
--:-- Eric Chen: My friend Ming Ma, a dance instructor, died trying to stop the attack. He was very beloved and respected in the dance community. He'd been doing that for over 20 years. He was trying to stop a shooter and he passed away.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After that, the shooter showed up to another dance studio. Brandon Say was there. He told Good Morning America that when he saw the gunman, he was pretty sure he was going to get killed, and he decided to take action.
--:-- Brandon Say: I needed to take this weapon, disarm him, or else everybody would have died. When I got the courage, I lunged at him with both my hands, grabbed the weapon, and we had to struggle. We struggled into the lobby trying to get this gun away from each other.
--:-- Brandon Say: Say managed to disarm him, and the gunman ran away.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For many, the shootings cast a dark cloud over Lunar New Year, which California recognized as an official state holiday for the first time this year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Celebrations are continuing in cities across the country. Local police and sheriffs say they have added extra security.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When the pandemic forced us into isolation, mental health took a major hit. Anxiety and depression rates went up, and receiving in-person care became more complicated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sensing opportunity, companies launched digital mental health services that promised safe and accessible care for millions of people through video, phone, and messaging.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last year, investors pumped close to $5 billion into these kinds of startups. But Rolf Winkler from The Wall Street Journal says many prioritized growth over delivering high-quality care.
--:-- Rolf Winkler: They are very good at letting you know who they are, and they invest a ton of time and resources in advertising. They don't invest nearly as much in training and clinical oversight of the therapists that actually work on their platform.
--:-- Rolf Winkler: What we found is often it can be hit or miss, the quality of the care that you get. To be clear, many patients say they received good care that would have been unavailable to them otherwise.
--:-- Rolf Winkler: But some people told me they were paired with therapists who were unprofessional or a bad match, like 22-year-old Caleb Hill.
--:-- Caleb Hill: After coming out to my parents, I was kicked out of my home. I signed up for a service called BetterHelp and requested a therapist specializing in LGBTQ+ clients. And I was given very unexpected advice.
--:-- Caleb Hill: The therapist said, have you thought about not being gay so you could go back to them? As I characterized it, he was offering me conversion therapy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: BetterHelp and Hill's therapist declined to comment on his experience citing patient confidentiality. BetterHelp said generally that negative experiences are not totally avoidable for virtual or in-person therapy.
--:-- Rolf Winkler: But I say Hill's experience demonstrates what can go wrong when mental health services treat people as customers first, patients second.
--:-- Rolf Winkler: If you have technology executives at the top of the company prioritizing customer attention, maximizing subscription revenue over a long period of time from a customer, that can come into serious conflict with the clinicians down the line who say, maybe this person isn't somebody we should be treating via telehealth.
--:-- Rolf Winkler: Maybe they should go see a real doctor in person. We shouldn't be taking their money from them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You do not want to mess with Taylor Swift fans. Ticketmaster was reminded of this recently when its sale of concert tickets ran into all kinds of problems.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Lots of fans couldn't get tickets. They sued. Congress took notice. And today, Ticketmaster's president is going to have to explain what happened in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The company now says that a cyber attack caused the issues that slowed down its website. It's just the latest controversy to dog Ticketmaster, which is perpetually under fire from music and sports fans.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Also, regulators, who say it may be abusing its market power. Ticketmaster is part of the larger company Live Nation. That means it operates venues, manages artists, promotes concerts, and sells tickets.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, it's not hard to see how there can be conflicts of interest, and the numbers on Ticketmaster's dominance are stark. It controls around 80 percent of the U.S. ticket market.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some bans have pointed this out and said this kind of monopoly power needs to be checked. Back in the 90s, Pearl Jam testified in Congress about Ticketmaster.
--:-- Pearl Jam: It is well known in our industry that some portion of the service charges Ticketmaster collects on its sale of tickets is distributed back to the promoters in the venues.
--:-- Pearl Jam: It is this incestuous relationship and the lack of any national competition for Ticketmaster that has created the situation we're dealing with today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Pearl Jam tried to tour without working with Ticketmaster, but they ran into lots of logistical problems. Mostly, despite all the criticism, big stars work with Ticketmaster.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The LA Times is out with a piece with a kind of counterintuitive view, something that few in the industry say out loud. Ticketmaster is on top because it works.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And one of the reasons it works is because it's a villain. The Times music reporter spoke to a lot of people in the industry from the ticket sale side to the band side, to fans, economists, and lawmakers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's wide consensus that Ticketmaster has enormous power and little accountability to fans. But many also say that it generally gets the job done when it comes to selling millions of tickets to giant venues.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Competitors fall short. Also, the piece points out something that's important to understand. This is where the villain part comes in. Ticketmaster doesn't set ticket prices. The artists do.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And most of them are aiming to make as much money as they possibly can. But this kind of naked capitalism isn't considered very rock and roll. Or rap. Or country. Or whatever.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So fans blaming Ticketmaster for high prices works great for artists. They still get to make lots of money, and Ticketmaster gets a nice cut for helping it all go smoothly.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After today's hearing, there are plenty of different avenues for lawmakers to consider if they want to overhaul the ticketing industry.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They might want to split up Live Nation. They might ban ticketing platforms from having exclusive contracts with venues.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But as some of the industry insiders who spoke to The Times point out, going after the biggest, smoothest operator out there might create new problems.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app, along with coverage of this morning's Oscar nomination announcements.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around. We've got a narrated article coming up next that touches on one of the year's most acclaimed films, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.
--:-- Shamita Basu: New York Magazine profiles one of its stars, Ki Hui Kwan, a former child actor who was picked by Steven Spielberg for a role in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now he's back on the big screen. He recently won a Golden Globe for his latest performance, and in his acceptance speech, he got emotional, reflecting on his career.
--:-- Ki Hui Kwan: For so many years, I was afraid that I had nothing more to offer, that no matter what I did, I would never surpass what I achieved as a kid.
--:-- Ki Hui Kwan: Thankfully, more than 30 years later, two guys thought of me. They remembered that kid. And they gave me an opportunity to try again.
--:-- Ki Hui Kwan: Dan Kwan, Daniel Steiner, thank you so, so much. You have given me more than I could have ever hoped. Thank you to the Hollywood...
--:-- Shamita Basu: That profile on Kwan will play next. I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
