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How And Why Is The Legacy (Mainstream) Media So Unbalanced? · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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  All right, it's the third hour of the Morning Show with Preston Scott Show
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  five thousand, one hundred and fifty four crazy right anyway, Good to be
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  with you. Grant Allen running the radio program as always, I am here
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  Preston Scott, located in Studio one B. I got an email back in
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  the middle of April from Rick who wrote, for those of us who truly
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  don't understand, could you do a segment sometime that explains why the mainstream media
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  are so in the pocket of the Democrats. I assume these people can think
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  for themselves and see where the Democrat policies are not good for this country.
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  What are they gaining for their support? And are means worth what we're losing?
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  Rick, my friend, I've held onto your email and I have reached
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  out to my friends at Heritage Foundation. I said, I need somebody to
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  talk about this, and joining us is Rob Bluie. Rob is the executive
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  editor for the news outlet for the Heritage Foundation, the Daily Signal, and
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  Rob, thanks for carving out some time for me. How are you.
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  Good morning, Preston. Great, Good to be with you today. All
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  right, so you get let's say you got that email what's your first response
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  before we dig a little bit into the weeds, what's your response to that
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  general question? Well, I mean, there are so many different directions we
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  can go with it. But you know, frankly, the Democratic Party of
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  today is nothing like the Democratic Party of yesteryear. And there are folks in
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  the news media, the legacy news media, if you will, who are
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  intent on portraying them as the modern, more progressive and in tune with the
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  American people party. But the reality is that what we've seen under Joe Biden's
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  tenure for the last three and a half years is nothing that provides the American
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  people with the prosperity and direction that this country needs to be going. Where
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  when look, I know that I'm your senior by a little bit, and
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  I observed this starting to drift. But in fairness, the media has never
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  really been unbiased since we founded this nation. There've always been little biases inside
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  the media, right, Oh, absolutely. You could go back to the
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  Nixon administration and heuro agnew famously, you know, talkering talking about the nattering,
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  nabobs, the megaism. You know, So there is a long history
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  of conservative frustration with the media. I think that when Donald Trump came on
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  the scene in twenty fifteen, things took a turn for the worst, though.
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  I mean, there is a hatred of Trump from so many journalists that
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  I think has probably contributed to some of the changes that we've seen in our
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  culture. I mean, you have, obviously the proliferation of social media,
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  where now everybody has a voice, and so much of what you read in
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  outlets like The New York Times and the Washington Post or see on television is
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  really reflective of this animosity toward this you know, successful businessman who all of
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  a sudden came in shook up our politics like nobody else in their lifetime.
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  I don't disagree that Trump brought out the bias on steroids, but Rob,
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  I've you know, I've been doing this show for now, I'm in my
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  twenty third year, and part of this entire program has been based on routinely
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  picking out segments in the media every single day that reflect overt bias. I'm
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  curious. You were the editor in chief of your your college newspaper, The
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  Ithaken. If I'm not mistaken, what was your what was your direction to
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  reporters? I mean, I found that there's been a divide between reporting and
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  op ed that is now totally blurred. That op eds now are used as
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  as reports and articles, and we've blurred that line. When you ran the
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  news department at your college, were you dealing with that certainly? President,
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  I mean keep in mind that was that was at a time when I think
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  things were less divided. That was that was before the pushcore election. You
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  know, it's really set us down this path of a red and blue America.
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  So you know, you it was also pre prior to social media,
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  and so you didn't have all these things. I would I agree with you
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  on the whether you call it an op ed or whether they now label an
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  analysis. Yet you're definitely seeing reporters' opinions leak into what have historically been in
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  or fact based news stories. But even beyond that, now you have social
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  media platforms where I think reporters feel free to state, you know, their
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  personal beliefs out in the open, and they try to have it both ways.
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  They try to be not only objective, which I don't think really exists,
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  or they are on x and they are more than happy to comment on
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  the latest legal proceedings in the Trump trial or what have you. And so
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  in the case of the newsroom. I mean, what you try to do
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  is you try to get reporters to focus on the facts, providing fair and
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  straightforward news reporting. Even at the Daily Signal, which does not hide its
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  conservative perspective on the news. You know, when we're reporting a story,
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  we're going to contact the people who may be in conflict with each other,
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  whether that's Republicans and Democrats, because I you know, truly believe that it's
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  important to give everybody an opportunity to talk. Now, sometimes they choose not
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  to, but at least you can make the effort. You know. This
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  could be like trying to figure out who was the first person on the sideline
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  of a football game to squirt water in the player's mouth because the player didn't
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  want to do it themselves, or maybe they were worried about spreading sickness.
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  Where did that all start? Trying to figure out where the bias and media
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  started. Rob Bluie with me from the Daily Signal. Rob, I have
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  a theory, and one of my theories is that news reporters oftentimes want to
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  be friends with the people that they're covering, and it compromises their ability to
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  write objectively because they want to be liked, they want to be in on
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  the inner circle. And so I feel as though a lot of the legacy
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  media outlets can can look no further than they just tried to be friends with
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  all the wrong people. Is there any truth to that? I do agree
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  with that, Preston, you have pinpointed one of the the piece of journalism
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  that perhaps listeners don't really you know, talk about or hear about all that
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  often that's how the sausage is made. So the relationship between a reporter and
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  a source, and that source could be a politician or a staffer who works
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  for that particular politician. You know, they have an incentive to obviously get
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  good coverage for themselves or their boss, and they dangle these nuggets exclusives or
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  scoops or or you know, tidbits of information that reporters obviously need to impress
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  their boss and get readership or viewership if you're on television. So maintaining a
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  friendly relationship is important. However, the thing is that you've pinpointed is that
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  it only seems to go on one side of the aisle. It seems to
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  be those those friendships are on the left, are with the Democratic party and
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  less so with Republicans. That's not to say that there are on any Republicans
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  who who are have a positive relationship with the news media, but it just
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  seems to be so skewed in the other direction. Well, I mean it's
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  borne out by donations to pull it up parties that are in newsrooms across the
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  country and in the legacy outlets in particular, be a. Gannett, The
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  New York Times, the Washington Post, whatever it might be that they they
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  these are college graduates. Okay, therein lies a partial problem in that they're
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  they're coming out of indoctrination camps. But then they're they're all leaning a particular
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  direction, but they they've lost their journalistic integrity. Why why is the marketplace
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  not bringing it back? Rob, what's your best guess on why? Gannett,
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  for example, they are shuttering papers across the country because they're circulations dwindled
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  to nothing because people don't trust them. That's right. Trust and media has
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  been historically low, but it's it's you know, currently one of the least
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  trusted institutions in America today. Maybe Congress only outranks it. Right, So
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  you know, there are there are a number of factors. I think you
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  pinpointed one of them, and that's the college graduates. So historically, if
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  you go back to even like one hundred years, when you look at at
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  the composition of the media newspaper men, I mean, there are a lot
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  of people were working class Americans who didn't necessarily have a prestigious Ivy League degree.
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  And as we've seen from places like The New York Times, they tend
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  to hire people that think and we kind of rotate into that same circle of
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  friends. And so if you have a newsroom that's made up of people who
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  have graduated from Harvard and Yale and Columbia and the places where we're seeing these
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  anti Semitic, anti Israel protests take place right now, that's the type of
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  that's the type of team that you're building. I mean, you are pulling
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  from the very radical left that inhibits many of these college campuses and particularly journalism
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  programs. But I think there's another factor here that you touched on, and
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  that is the dwindling circulation. I think that as more Americans get their news
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  from social media platforms and turn directly to the source of information, whether that
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  be a lawmaker, whether that be somebody locally in their community who's a particularly
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  influential voice. They don't need to subscribe to newspapers anymore, and they're looking
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  for alternative sources of information. Twenty two minutes past the Hour with season news
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  guy Rob Bluie, executive editor with The Daily Signal. Rob tell me we
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  were just talking about the impact that online news sources have had. You know,
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  there was a good while that a lot of conservatives would lean on the
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  Drudge Report. Then Matt Drudge seemingly lost his mind, and virtually no one
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  seems to go there anymore. How do you how do you find good sources
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  online for objective news, not opinion, but news. It's increasingly tough,
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  resident, I'll tell you I started in the news business in conservative media back
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  in around two thousand and two, at a time when there was probably you
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  could count on one hand the number of conservative outlets that existed, and there's
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  just been a proliferation of that, not just at the national level, but
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  it's the state level. So you know, it's it's definitely something that you
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  need to be discerning and somewhat skeptical of as you're looking at your sources of
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  information and news, particularly if you're getting it through social media, because you
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  know, so often things can spread virally even before uh, you know,
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  the truth or the facts you know are are known. And so my evaluation
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  is, you know, look for for names, reputable names of individuals that
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  you know that you can trust and have proven to be reliable in the past.
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  There are a lot of news sites that pop up each and every day,
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  and well, I think some of them, you know, aspire to
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  do good work. Look and see on their about page. You know what,
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  what what's their background? You know, do they have experience in journalism?
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  Do they have a commitment to the truth and and making corrections and doing
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  all those standard things that we have experienced, you know, news people would
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  would do because even as conservative, let's face it, you know, we
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  in many cases are under more screwed me to get the facts right because of
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  the watchdogs that are out there that will come after us if we don't.
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  Are there tells out there? For example, when you, as a guy
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  who does this for a living, read an article from somebody out there,
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  are there things that give it away. I'm going to give you an example
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  of something I've picked up on of late. And some may call this petty,
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  I do not when talking about transgender issues and a specific person, and
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  they refer to that person as their tried transgender pronoun as opposed to their biological
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  pronoun. I consider that bad reporting. Now some might say I'm parsing over
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  small things, but I think words matter, especially in your industry. And
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  if we're going to refer to a biological mail as a her, I find
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  that reporting immediately suspect. I'm so glad you brought this up. So there
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  is what the journalists call the reporter's bible is the Associated Pressed style Book,
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  and the style book is what I was taught in let so many others learn,
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  and the the AP style Book unfortunately has adopted a lot of the woke
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  language of the left, including on that issue. And so it takes organizations
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  and news outlets like the Daily Signals and others and others to develop their own
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  style book and really adhere to the words that that don't cater to one ideology
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  or the other. And so we we do take very that very seriously,
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  and I would I would be mindful of news organizations that just adhere to the
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  left standard of language as opposed to one that may be more traditional But then
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  the other thing I would I would say in terms of things to to certainly
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  evaluate and look at me. I still adhere to this as much as I
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  can. Three you know, three sources per story. I mean that way,
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  you don't just have one person who is trying to push their agenda,
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  but you have others who are commenting on it. And so look at the
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  people who are quoted in a story, or how many the reporter may cite
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  in the story, and the more that are generally quoted, the more credible
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  I think the story is. I gave an example, and I've given it
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  a few times about how the Democrats leak information to the media and you can
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  sometimes find pending legislation that's going to be coming based on the media blurb.
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  And I cited and still have printed a list of headlines spanning a three to
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  four week period that were virtually identical. And it's not because they picked up
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  the same AP story. They picked up the same release from someone inside the
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  Democrat party up in Congress, and they ran with it, and then sure
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  enough, legislation followed. How often are pumps being primed by the mainstream media
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  now to do the bidding of the political parties. Oh, I would say
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  it happens on a daily basis. I mean, what you're talking about is
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  kind of floating a trial balloon to see how it goes over. So you
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  would give the scoop or the exclusive to a particular reporter or maybe you know
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  several reporters. They would porce the news on that to see what kind of
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  reaction it gets, maybe on social media or or or even among influential audiences.
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  And and you do that so that when you do introduce a piece of
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  legislation, you're not embarrassed or you know, you can maybe anticipate some of
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  the questions that you may be asked. So it happens quite regularly, and
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  it's probably both happening on both the Democrat and Republicans side. I would say
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  that Democrats tend to be more effective. Uh, they have you know,
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  a friendlier ally in the news media. Absolutely, they've got more donors sitting
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  out there. Rob, thanks very much for the time this morning. And
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  uh, and we're going to circle around and visit sometime again soon. Thank
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  you, Thank you, Preston, appreciate it. Rob Bluey, executive director
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  with the Daily Signal, our guest, and this is The Morning Show with
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  Preston Scott,