How And Why Is The Legacy (Mainstream) Media So Unbalanced?

We may not have gotten over the target, but a good conversation was had with Rob Bluey, Executive Editor of the Daily Signal.

Episode Transcript

(00:13):
All right, it's the third hourof the Morning Show with Preston Scott Show
five thousand, one hundred and fiftyfour crazy right anyway, Good to be
with you. Grant Allen running theradio program as always, I am here
Preston Scott, located in Studio oneB. I got an email back in

(00:35):
the middle of April from Rick whowrote, for those of us who truly
don't understand, could you do asegment sometime that explains why the mainstream media
are so in the pocket of theDemocrats. I assume these people can think
for themselves and see where the Democratpolicies are not good for this country.

(00:56):
What are they gaining for their support? And are means worth what we're losing?
Rick, my friend, I've heldonto your email and I have reached
out to my friends at Heritage Foundation. I said, I need somebody to
talk about this, and joining usis Rob Bluie. Rob is the executive

(01:18):
editor for the news outlet for theHeritage Foundation, the Daily Signal, and
Rob, thanks for carving out sometime for me. How are you.
Good morning, Preston. Great,Good to be with you today. All
right, so you get let's sayyou got that email what's your first response
before we dig a little bit intothe weeds, what's your response to that
general question? Well, I mean, there are so many different directions we

(01:42):
can go with it. But youknow, frankly, the Democratic Party of
today is nothing like the Democratic Partyof yesteryear. And there are folks in
the news media, the legacy newsmedia, if you will, who are
intent on portraying them as the modern, more progressive and in tune with the

(02:04):
American people party. But the realityis that what we've seen under Joe Biden's
tenure for the last three and ahalf years is nothing that provides the American
people with the prosperity and direction thatthis country needs to be going. Where
when look, I know that I'myour senior by a little bit, and

(02:24):
I observed this starting to drift.But in fairness, the media has never
really been unbiased since we founded thisnation. There've always been little biases inside
the media, right, Oh,absolutely. You could go back to the

(02:44):
Nixon administration and heuro agnew famously,you know, talkering talking about the nattering,
nabobs, the megaism. You know, So there is a long history
of conservative frustration with the media.I think that when Donald Trump came on
the scene in twenty fifteen, thingstook a turn for the worst, though.
I mean, there is a hatredof Trump from so many journalists that

(03:07):
I think has probably contributed to someof the changes that we've seen in our
culture. I mean, you have, obviously the proliferation of social media,
where now everybody has a voice,and so much of what you read in
outlets like The New York Times andthe Washington Post or see on television is
really reflective of this animosity toward thisyou know, successful businessman who all of

(03:30):
a sudden came in shook up ourpolitics like nobody else in their lifetime.
I don't disagree that Trump brought outthe bias on steroids, but Rob,
I've you know, I've been doingthis show for now, I'm in my
twenty third year, and part ofthis entire program has been based on routinely
picking out segments in the media everysingle day that reflect overt bias. I'm

(03:58):
curious. You were the editor inchief of your your college newspaper, The
Ithaken. If I'm not mistaken,what was your what was your direction to
reporters? I mean, I foundthat there's been a divide between reporting and
op ed that is now totally blurred. That op eds now are used as

(04:19):
as reports and articles, and we'veblurred that line. When you ran the
news department at your college, wereyou dealing with that certainly? President,
I mean keep in mind that wasthat was at a time when I think
things were less divided. That wasthat was before the pushcore election. You

(04:40):
know, it's really set us downthis path of a red and blue America.
So you know, you it wasalso pre prior to social media,
and so you didn't have all thesethings. I would I agree with you
on the whether you call it anop ed or whether they now label an
analysis. Yet you're definitely seeing reporters'opinions leak into what have historically been in

(05:00):
or fact based news stories. Buteven beyond that, now you have social
media platforms where I think reporters feelfree to state, you know, their
personal beliefs out in the open,and they try to have it both ways.
They try to be not only objective, which I don't think really exists,
or they are on x and theyare more than happy to comment on

(05:24):
the latest legal proceedings in the Trumptrial or what have you. And so
in the case of the newsroom.I mean, what you try to do
is you try to get reporters tofocus on the facts, providing fair and
straightforward news reporting. Even at theDaily Signal, which does not hide its
conservative perspective on the news. Youknow, when we're reporting a story,

(05:46):
we're going to contact the people whomay be in conflict with each other,
whether that's Republicans and Democrats, becauseI you know, truly believe that it's
important to give everybody an opportunity totalk. Now, sometimes they choose not
to, but at least you canmake the effort. You know. This
could be like trying to figure outwho was the first person on the sideline

(06:09):
of a football game to squirt waterin the player's mouth because the player didn't
want to do it themselves, ormaybe they were worried about spreading sickness.
Where did that all start? Tryingto figure out where the bias and media
started. Rob Bluie with me fromthe Daily Signal. Rob, I have
a theory, and one of mytheories is that news reporters oftentimes want to

(06:32):
be friends with the people that they'recovering, and it compromises their ability to
write objectively because they want to beliked, they want to be in on
the inner circle. And so Ifeel as though a lot of the legacy
media outlets can can look no furtherthan they just tried to be friends with
all the wrong people. Is thereany truth to that? I do agree

(06:55):
with that, Preston, you havepinpointed one of the the piece of journalism
that perhaps listeners don't really you know, talk about or hear about all that
often that's how the sausage is made. So the relationship between a reporter and
a source, and that source couldbe a politician or a staffer who works
for that particular politician. You know, they have an incentive to obviously get

(07:17):
good coverage for themselves or their boss, and they dangle these nuggets exclusives or
scoops or or you know, tidbitsof information that reporters obviously need to impress
their boss and get readership or viewershipif you're on television. So maintaining a
friendly relationship is important. However,the thing is that you've pinpointed is that

(07:39):
it only seems to go on oneside of the aisle. It seems to
be those those friendships are on theleft, are with the Democratic party and
less so with Republicans. That's notto say that there are on any Republicans
who who are have a positive relationshipwith the news media, but it just
seems to be so skewed in theother direction. Well, I mean it's
borne out by donations to pull itup parties that are in newsrooms across the

(08:01):
country and in the legacy outlets inparticular, be a. Gannett, The
New York Times, the Washington Post, whatever it might be that they they
these are college graduates. Okay,therein lies a partial problem in that they're
they're coming out of indoctrination camps.But then they're they're all leaning a particular
direction, but they they've lost theirjournalistic integrity. Why why is the marketplace

(08:26):
not bringing it back? Rob,what's your best guess on why? Gannett,
for example, they are shuttering papersacross the country because they're circulations dwindled
to nothing because people don't trust them. That's right. Trust and media has
been historically low, but it's it'syou know, currently one of the least
trusted institutions in America today. MaybeCongress only outranks it. Right, So

(08:48):
you know, there are there area number of factors. I think you
pinpointed one of them, and that'sthe college graduates. So historically, if
you go back to even like onehundred years, when you look at at
the composition of the media newspaper men, I mean, there are a lot
of people were working class Americans whodidn't necessarily have a prestigious Ivy League degree.
And as we've seen from places likeThe New York Times, they tend

(09:11):
to hire people that think and wekind of rotate into that same circle of
friends. And so if you havea newsroom that's made up of people who
have graduated from Harvard and Yale andColumbia and the places where we're seeing these
anti Semitic, anti Israel protests takeplace right now, that's the type of
that's the type of team that you'rebuilding. I mean, you are pulling
from the very radical left that inhibitsmany of these college campuses and particularly journalism

(09:39):
programs. But I think there's anotherfactor here that you touched on, and
that is the dwindling circulation. Ithink that as more Americans get their news
from social media platforms and turn directlyto the source of information, whether that
be a lawmaker, whether that besomebody locally in their community who's a particularly
influential voice. They don't need tosubscribe to newspapers anymore, and they're looking

(10:00):
for alternative sources of information. Twentytwo minutes past the Hour with season news
guy Rob Bluie, executive editor withThe Daily Signal. Rob tell me we
were just talking about the impact thatonline news sources have had. You know,

(10:22):
there was a good while that alot of conservatives would lean on the
Drudge Report. Then Matt Drudge seeminglylost his mind, and virtually no one
seems to go there anymore. Howdo you how do you find good sources
online for objective news, not opinion, but news. It's increasingly tough,

(10:45):
resident, I'll tell you I startedin the news business in conservative media back
in around two thousand and two,at a time when there was probably you
could count on one hand the numberof conservative outlets that existed, and there's
just been a proliferation of that,not just at the national level, but
it's the state level. So youknow, it's it's definitely something that you
need to be discerning and somewhat skepticalof as you're looking at your sources of

(11:09):
information and news, particularly if you'regetting it through social media, because you
know, so often things can spreadvirally even before uh, you know,
the truth or the facts you knoware are known. And so my evaluation
is, you know, look forfor names, reputable names of individuals that
you know that you can trust andhave proven to be reliable in the past.

(11:33):
There are a lot of news sitesthat pop up each and every day,
and well, I think some ofthem, you know, aspire to
do good work. Look and seeon their about page. You know what,
what what's their background? You know, do they have experience in journalism?
Do they have a commitment to thetruth and and making corrections and doing
all those standard things that we haveexperienced, you know, news people would

(11:54):
would do because even as conservative,let's face it, you know, we
in many cases are under more screwedme to get the facts right because of
the watchdogs that are out there thatwill come after us if we don't.
Are there tells out there? Forexample, when you, as a guy
who does this for a living,read an article from somebody out there,
are there things that give it away. I'm going to give you an example

(12:16):
of something I've picked up on oflate. And some may call this petty,
I do not when talking about transgenderissues and a specific person, and
they refer to that person as theirtried transgender pronoun as opposed to their biological
pronoun. I consider that bad reporting. Now some might say I'm parsing over

(12:39):
small things, but I think wordsmatter, especially in your industry. And
if we're going to refer to abiological mail as a her, I find
that reporting immediately suspect. I'm soglad you brought this up. So there
is what the journalists call the reporter'sbible is the Associated Pressed style Book,
and the style book is what Iwas taught in let so many others learn,

(13:01):
and the the AP style Book unfortunatelyhas adopted a lot of the woke
language of the left, including onthat issue. And so it takes organizations
and news outlets like the Daily Signalsand others and others to develop their own
style book and really adhere to thewords that that don't cater to one ideology
or the other. And so wewe do take very that very seriously,

(13:24):
and I would I would be mindfulof news organizations that just adhere to the
left standard of language as opposed toone that may be more traditional But then
the other thing I would I wouldsay in terms of things to to certainly
evaluate and look at me. Istill adhere to this as much as I

(13:45):
can. Three you know, threesources per story. I mean that way,
you don't just have one person whois trying to push their agenda,
but you have others who are commentingon it. And so look at the
people who are quoted in a story, or how many the reporter may cite
in the story, and the morethat are generally quoted, the more credible
I think the story is. Igave an example, and I've given it

(14:05):
a few times about how the Democratsleak information to the media and you can
sometimes find pending legislation that's going tobe coming based on the media blurb.
And I cited and still have printeda list of headlines spanning a three to
four week period that were virtually identical. And it's not because they picked up

(14:26):
the same AP story. They pickedup the same release from someone inside the
Democrat party up in Congress, andthey ran with it, and then sure
enough, legislation followed. How oftenare pumps being primed by the mainstream media
now to do the bidding of thepolitical parties. Oh, I would say
it happens on a daily basis.I mean, what you're talking about is

(14:48):
kind of floating a trial balloon tosee how it goes over. So you
would give the scoop or the exclusiveto a particular reporter or maybe you know
several reporters. They would porce thenews on that to see what kind of
reaction it gets, maybe on socialmedia or or or even among influential audiences.
And and you do that so thatwhen you do introduce a piece of

(15:09):
legislation, you're not embarrassed or youknow, you can maybe anticipate some of
the questions that you may be asked. So it happens quite regularly, and
it's probably both happening on both theDemocrat and Republicans side. I would say
that Democrats tend to be more effective. Uh, they have you know,
a friendlier ally in the news media. Absolutely, they've got more donors sitting

(15:31):
out there. Rob, thanks verymuch for the time this morning. And
uh, and we're going to circlearound and visit sometime again soon. Thank
you, Thank you, Preston,appreciate it. Rob Bluey, executive director
with the Daily Signal, our guest, and this is The Morning Show with
Preston Scott,