This is Democracy – Episode 114: The Right-Wing Media and the Future of American Journalism

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] This is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial inter generational

[0:00:10 Speaker 1] and intersectional unheard voices living in the world’s

[0:00:13 Speaker 0] most influential democracy. Welcome

[0:00:24 Speaker 2] to our new episode of This is Democracy. This week we’re going to discuss the right wing media and its effects on American politics, where the right wing media comes from what we mean by it and how it has and continues to affect the politics of our democracy in the United States and in other countries as well. We have with us easily the most interesting and important person writing about these issues, someone who’s also ah, good friend and someone who I’m sure many of you will recognize from her voice. Uh, she’s appearing all over the country talking about these issues as well as other issues in our politics and media today. This is Nicole Hemmer. She, uh, is a political historian right now. She’s, among many other things, the associate research scholar with the Obama Presidency Aural History Project at Columbia University. Uh, she’s the author of one of my favorite books, and I think, one of most important books on understanding this topic and in fact, politics in modern America in general, messengers of the right conservative media and the transformation of American politics. Uh, Nicole is also the founder and co editor are made by History, which is the historical analysis section of The Washington Post that many of us have had the good fortune to write for that we’ve also had the good fortune of being edited by Nicole. She’s a great editor. She’s a columnist for Box. I’m sure many of you have seen her work there, she writes for the Age in Melbourne. Uh, she’s the co host of her own Siris of podcasts. In fact, she’s she’s a podcaster extraordinaire. She hosts past present, which I highly recommend, where she and two other historians discussed the latest news in American politics and culture. She’s the producer and host of one of, I think, the most important podcasts on understanding white supremacy and white radicalism and violence in America today. It’s called a 12 The Story of Charlottesville. Nicole was there in Charlottesville during those terrible um, events, and as I said, I’m sure you’ve seen her on CNN. Heard her on NPR. She writes frequently for The New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic politico on and everything else. So Nicole, Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us today.

[0:02:40 Speaker 1] Thank you so much for having me on Jeremy.

[0:02:43 Speaker 2] Before we turn to our discussion with Nicole. We’re going to go to Zachary’s scene setting poem I Zachary. What’s the title of your poem?

[0:02:54 Speaker 0] The wise man addresses the masses.

[0:02:57 Speaker 2] Okay, let’s hear about the wise man in the masses.

[0:03:01 Speaker 0] The wise man addresses the masses. The box it talks, the metal speaks the dial’s turns and the idiot squeaks. It is time the men learn about liars. The box It may talk, the metal may speak, the Daio may turn and the idiot may weep. But the truth, my dear, is something alone, lacking of fear It is hope in a desert and song in the dirt The wise man they know is right but isn’t might an endless source of right. The wise man stops He speaks again, but differently. Oh, hear me! Huddled masses e orange Highfalutin ass is yearning for the giant potato chip. Oh, hear me! Ye Sources of gasses e poppers dreaming of Crassus. The lemon goes out with molasses. There are sudden whispers among the crowds. They ponder the words of the wise man. There is silence, they have realized. But then the box begins to shout from the back of the crowds, and so did the metal. And with it the T still fourth with the kettle. The wise man is left alone to examine the empty auditorium to speak to himself of their failures.

[0:04:11 Speaker 2] I love that Zachary. It it’s it’s both funny and satirical at the same time. What is your poem really about?

[0:04:19 Speaker 0] My poem is really about what makes people listen to right wing media and what makes lying in and fearmongering so appealing to people. But it’s also about the sort of twisted ways that we try and appeal to those who listen to right wing media, this sort of strange ways that we try and convince people that they shouldn’t listen. Toe

[0:04:39 Speaker 2] lies great. Well, well, Nikki, I think that’s a great spot to turn to you. What do we mean by the right wing media? Who? What is this that Zachary’s referring thio?

[0:04:51 Speaker 1] Well, these days it’s more than just right wing media, right? It’s an entire media ecosystem. It’s websites and radio and television, things like Fox News and One American News. Um, Rush Limbaugh is still on the airwaves, but so are dozens of other imitators. And then, of course, Thean turn. ETA’s well has opened up a whole new bandwidth for right wing media. And these are our media outlets that are in many ways the communication arm of the Republican Party. They’ve grown up into that over the decades. Um, and they are, you know, about spreading a message to conservative voters, um, to both keep them as conservative voters and give them talking points in ways of thinking about the world that support a certain set of policies and ideas

[0:05:48 Speaker 2] that that’s that’s so helpful in getting, ah, sense of what? This what this looks like, Um, I grew up in and I think you did about Aziz well, in the in the 19 eighties, and we didn’t have this this ecosystem where we least we didn’t know about it, we didn’t talk about it and we didn’t talk about it in presidential and Senate races. Then where did it come from?

[0:06:09 Speaker 1] So it actually does predate both of us. There was a right wing media, a much smaller ecosystem. Starting in the 19 forties and 19 fifties, thes were radio shows by the 19 sixties television shows, magazines like National Review, newsletters like Human Events, Eso They Were and an entire sort of media industry. That was about communicating conservative ideas because at the time conservatives felt like they were way outside of the mainstream of the memory of American politics and that they needed to find a way thio shape a message that would appeal not only to disparate conservatives all over the country but eventually that would appeal Thio more and more a majority of Americans so they could start winning elections.

[0:07:00 Speaker 2] And what were some of their big issues that they felt were not covered fairly by the mainstream media?

[0:07:07 Speaker 1] So at the very beginning, a lot of these folks come out of the America First Committee in the America first Movement. So they felt like non intervention in World War two was not being covered fairly. Um, that issue dies with Pearl Harbor more or less on by the 19 fifties. They feel like things like anti union sentiment is not being covered fairly. Um, the cold War, they think, is being covered way too softly that that media outlets are not alerting Americans to the rial threat of the Communist conspiracy in the United States. And those really are the two twin issues that are motivating conservatives in the 1950 that media outlets for conservatives are focusing on.

[0:07:51 Speaker 0] When did when did these media outlets begin to define this sort of public consciousness and sort of public discourse around politics?

[0:07:59 Speaker 1] That’s a great question. I mean, in some ways they start fairly early on because thes conservative media actors, starting with people like Clarence Mannion, who is a radio host Bill rusher who is the publisher of National Review, are actually promoting and shaping the candidacy of Barry Goldwater in 1960 1964. So when Barry Goldwater wins the Republican nomination in 1964 Americans air hearing a lot more from conservative media because they’re hearing it through Barry Goldwater. But that’s very different from the kind of influence that they have today. If you want to fast forward to when they’re actually shaping American politics in a much more meaningful and much more visible way, you have to fast forward all the way to the 19 nineties. Rush Limbaugh goes national in 1988 and by the early 19 nineties he is a media phenomenon. He’s a juggernaut. He has bestselling books. In 1992 he has his own television show. In addition to this massive radio show, he’s being invited to the Republican National Convention. He is the face and the voice of conservative media and other media outlets are paying serious attention to him And that moment when conservative media begins to be treated as a really political force in the United States by both Republicans and by the than mainstream media, as it became called, that’s a real turning point in conservative media’s influence. And

[0:09:36 Speaker 2] and why, at that moment, why in the late eighties, early nineties, as you say, Why does Rush take off it? I mean, he’s It’s so backward, in a sense, because it’s on radio, it’s not. It’s not a new new media technology.

[0:09:49 Speaker 1] No, it’s not a new media technology at all, but new technologies are playing a role in this. On by that, I mean, you know, music is moving over to the FM dial that’s just opened up, and so now you have the am dial kind of abandoned and in need of programming. You have a new technologies for long distance telephone calls, which allows you to have ah, national call in show. You have new satellite technologies that allows you to beam the show live all around the country. So there are a lot of technologies that are in play. And then, you know, I think this is sometimes overemphasize somewhat, but there’s policy changes as well. I mean, the fairness doctrine which had governed what could be, um, aired and how it could be aired on radio, is struck down by the end of the Reagan administration in 1987. And for a lot of conservative media, a lot of conservative radio outlets they really did struggle with the fairness doctrine, which required fair coverage of important issues on that often meant that you couldn’t have a propaganda station. And if you were just wall to wall right wing talk, that was considered a violation of the fairness doctrine. So without that, you have a much more fertile policy ground for this kind of again. Walt Wall uncut conservative messaging.

[0:11:12 Speaker 2] This is such an important point. I’m so glad you brought it up. It just might be worth drilling down for a second, As I understand it, uh, particularly for radio, right, the airwaves air governed by the FCC, the Federal Communications Committee and and the Federal Communications Commission Excuse me and the the general law was that you had to offer at least some fair and balanced and truly fair and balanced just Amado fair and balanced coverage of the issues that you were discussing if they were political and and no longer is that the case after the repeal of the fairness doctrine, is that correct?

[0:11:45 Speaker 1] Yes. So this actually comes out of World War Two and this fear that fascists and ideologues and and dictators could use radio as propaganda. They’d seen that happen in the 19 thirties and 19 forties in Europe, and they wanted to prevent it from happening in the US, So they were like, Okay, there had been a ban on editorializing altogether. They get rid of that and they say you can comment on politics, but if you do so you have to do so in a balanced way. And you know, it’s tricky because the FCC doesn’t really have any way Thio Thio enforce this order other than taking away of stations license, which is really draconian, Um, thing to do to them eso itt’s. It’s a regulation that exists. It is occasionally enforced. It does have a chilling effect for some radio stations where they just try to avoid politics altogether because they don’t want to get crosswise with the FCC. Um, but once it’s gone, that kind of regulation of political content goes with it, and it’s ah, it’s a free for all on radio after that.

[0:12:59 Speaker 2] And was the was this law repealed with the intention of empowering the right wing media?

[0:13:06 Speaker 1] No, not at all. And in fact, if you look at the fights over the fairness doctrine in the late 19 eighties, um, you know, it had been framed in many ways as deregulating radio s. It was part of Reagan’s deregulation drive. But there were all sorts of conservatives who were fighting to keep the fairness doctrine. So there were all these attempts in 87 89 again in 93. Thio reinstate the fairness doctrine and the people who are driving that are people like Bill Ish lastly, and Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott. All of these conservative politicians, because they understood the fairness doctrine to be a way to get more conservative voices on air. They were arguing that liberals control the media. And the fairness doctrine is a tool for us to get mawr conservative content out there. It’s not until Rush Limbaugh shows that conservative media can function very, very well in a post fairness doctrine landscape that you get the right turning on the fairness doctrine and turning it into this bogeyman that it’s become today. Why do we

[0:14:08 Speaker 0] see, um, in and I’m gonna be careful how I say this? Why do we see, particularly today such an outgrowth of right wing media and conspiracy theories, Or at least the take, uh, the placing of right wing media and their products on the national stage on the national political stage in a way that we don’t see on the left or we don’t see when it comes? Thio other media outlets that have different point of views.

[0:14:33 Speaker 1] So this is a place where the history is really important. Um, you know, I’ve talked about this conservative media being a product of the 19 forties in the 19 fifties. It grew up alongside the modern conservative movement, not only grew up alongside it but was, ah, major force and developing the modern conservative movement. And so for conservatives in the United States, since that time, some 80 years ago, listening to conservative media has been part of what it means to be conservative. It is to seek out alternative sources of information to consume conservative media products. And that’s part of the conservative identity in a way that just isn’t true for other political identities in the U. S. And so that has a really power over time because you have a kind of built in audience already an audience that is craving this kind of content and because the media project with such an important part of the political project you have people constantly trying to build in this space because they see it as a form of political action. Um, you don’t necessarily have the same kind of media criticism on the left, although that’s I think, changing over the past 10 years or so. You don’t have that same kind of sustained media criticism on the left, and you don’t have that same kind of sustained alternative institution building and without those two things, you know, conservatives have had an 80 year head start, and even as the left continues to push into this space a little bit more, they’re pretty far behind. Um, in making this part of the liberal and left identity in the U. S.

[0:16:19 Speaker 0] Does some of this

[0:16:20 Speaker 2] have to do Nicky with nature of the listeners on and who does listen to this?

[0:16:25 Speaker 1] So figuring out listenership is actually pretty difficult. It’s something that I really struggled with in my book. I mean, we can look at people who are writing in letters. We could look at the claims that the radio shows or television shows air making, but actually drilling down and figuring out can be can be challenging. But we do know some demographics. We know that, um, consumers of conservative media, and it varies based on type. But let’s say radio and television, um, tend to be older. Um, they tend to be white. Um, they tend to be a committed, which is to say, you sometimes get converts who come through the door from conservative media, but a lot of times people are seeking out the Rush Limbaugh show or Fox News eso. It tends to already be a base that believes what it’s going to here and is having its beliefs reinforce its not necessarily, um, place of conversion so much as it is ah, place to reinforce the things you already believe. Now there are also people who are not conservative who listen, I probably know. Listen to a lot of conservative talk radio. I watch a lot of Fox News on, and I think that there are other liberals out there who do. This is, well, another non conservatives out there who do a swell. But they tend to go in with their guard, rails up understanding and conservative media very differently because, you know, when non conservatives listen to conservative media, not always. But most of the time they understand it as this is a place where conservatives, they’re going to try to tell me what they believe when it comes to conservatives. It’s very different, you know, I was telling some very conservative relatives of mine, um, that I was working on a book on conservative media and they looked at me kind of funny and they’re really But there is no conservative media, and I’m like you watch Fox News like eight hours a day and they’re like, Well, yeah, that’s the only place that I could get the truth. So there’s a real divide there and how people listen and consume conservative media

[0:18:34 Speaker 2] And you brought up a point that I wanted to make sure that we we drew on your expertise for, among many other things, Why is Fox News different? I’ve often had this argument with people, but to me, uh, there’s bias in all sorts of media outlets. CNN has bias all sorts of things of that kind, right? But Fox News, I think, is different from the other networks. Is that true? First of all, on how is it different?

[0:19:02 Speaker 1] It is true, and I think that this is a really important point because there is. There are all kinds of biases and journalism because journalism is created by human beings and human beings have biases. But something like Fox News is a specific kind of political project, and it’s understood that way of Fox News is first and foremost a source of media criticism. It comes out of this idea that all other media outlets are liberal. We are providing balance by being the conservative network, and so it has a specific ideology that it is trying to promote and a specific ideology. That is, how would I put this resistant to reality In a way that is not often the case in other places, like CNN or even MSNBC, which has more of an overt political bias to the left. UM, Fox is understands its role as part of a broader political project. And you can see that when, for instance, in 2012 its’s rallying the troops around Mitt Romney, or in 2016 when, despite really resisting Donald Trump is a phenomenon. By the time Donald Trump becomes the nominee, the network understands, all right. Our goal here is to get this guy across the finish line on DSO. Understanding its role in relation to electoral politics makes it, I think, quite different from other outlets. How do

[0:20:31 Speaker 2] we understand, though the fact that they still at Fox News have, um, some reporters, some journalists who seemed to be willing to criticize even Donald Trump in a way that that your description will lead us to be surprised by I mean recently, Fox News, or at least one major correspondent there, Pentagon correspondent confirmed some of the allegations in the Atlantic story about President Trump’s derogatory statements about the military, even though the White House was clearly, uh concerned and told them not to do that. How do we understand that?

[0:21:05 Speaker 1] Sure. So from the very beginning, in 1996 Fox News had both a news and UN opinion wing, Um, and it was often talked about by people like Roger Ailes, who is one of the founders of Fox, as kind of a church and state situation that these were two separate divisions. Never the Twain shall meet. We do serious real journalism on the news side of things, and we do opinion on the other side, and that’s a free for all. And it’s not held to new standards. They’re just different. And you often saw in, um, even in the last five years or so, some real conflicts Azi were saying between the news division and theater opinion division. That separation, first of all, is not as neatly maintained as Fox News would have. You believe. I mean, you see a lot of the opinion leaking into the a sensible news coverage on dure, also seeing more and more that dissenters are less and less welcomed at Fox News. So Shep Smith, who had been sort of the voice of dissent, crying out from the mid afternoon hours that Fox News was eventually pushed out for his criticisms. And the number of people at Fox News who are doing kind of what we would think of as untainted or more objective kind of journalism is a dwindling number. There still are people like you said, Um, you know, Chris Wallace does thes interviews that always irritate conservatives because they behold somebody like Donald Trump’s feet to the fire a little bit more than other journalists. Um, but Thio imagine that as the primary function of Fox News would be wrong, it is at this point, kind of, ah, rump operation of the network. Where is

[0:22:54 Speaker 0] there Hope Here it often seems, with Trump turning farther and farther toe writer and writer media that that that that that that the media ecosystem is becoming even more polarized and even mawr counterfactual, where is there hope here and where is there? Where is there a chance for us to improve our our journalism and our our media ecosystem.

[0:23:18 Speaker 1] So I think that the hope lies outside of conservative media. I don’t think that conservative media has really shown during the trump era. But outside of conservative media in journalism, there has been a really reckoning in the past several years reckoning about the coverage of the 2016 election in some ways, but also about core journalistic values and how outlets are expressing those. And that could be everything from thinking about how white three institutions are and how they cover issues of race and justice. Um, but it’s also about, you know, we hold up objectivity as the er value of journalism. This is the thing that we should. We should be dispassionate. We should be objective, and that has real flaws to it. It has resulted in, you know, the criticism that’s very popular now, which is both side ism, which is to treat everything is kind of valueless, um, in a sense that it just needs to be balanced, and that’s the highest value you can aspire Thio And there has been riel reflection over the past five years about the flaws of that model and how we might build a journalism that not only addresses a set of core values, um, liberal values in the in the kind of Universalist liberal sense of democracy and protecting minority rights and those kinds of things. Eso ah, really focus on that. And then also a focus on how do we create a journalism that can not only survive but flourish in a new technological and economic environment? And I think that they’re very serious people working very hard on those questions in order to build a better journalism. It’s not happening in Fox News circles, but it is happening in the broader world of journalism, and it’s something that I think we should be pretty hopeful about.

[0:25:22 Speaker 2] Well, and you have been a pioneer as someone who is both a historian and works in the journalistic space. I think it’s fair to say you’re both a historian and a journalist of the highest quality, and you I think, particularly in the work you’ve done on Charlottesville on what happened in Charlottesville on various other issues. I think you’ve been you’ve been a pioneer. I wanted us to close with with another question about that. But before we get to that, I have to ask one other question. Uh, to what extent is it fair to say that the right wing media is racist?

[0:25:53 Speaker 1] So I would say that racism is a powerful tool in right wing media that it uses to energize and to mobilize its audiences. I mean, I don’t think, you know, right wing media again is a, you know, kind of diverse world. In a lot of ways, it depends on what outlets you’re talking about. But you know, from everything from national view in the 19 fifties, dependent defending apartheid in the South to National Review in the 19 seventies, defending apartheid in South Africa. Um Thio you know Tucker Carlson, whose white power hour at the end of every day on Fox News at 8 p.m. Is a place where white supremacists and white nationalists are able to get their message out, whether through writers like a recently fired head writer who was posting on white supremacist websites, or Tucker Carlson himself, who says that white supremacy is a hoax? I mean, there is It is not the Onley defining feature of conservative media, but especially as conservatism and the Republican Party become more and more white, and as thes outlets have become more and more a reflection of trumpism, they have more openly embraced racism. But it also predates Trump. I mean, remember that Glenn Beck was saying in 9 4010 that Barack Obama hates white people and stoking that sort of racial resentment that we then see reflected in the tea party. So racism is not the only component, but it is a core component of conservative media these days,

[0:27:35 Speaker 2] and and and this has been a topic. Obviously, we’ve talked a lot about in the podcast about the ways in which race and democracy overlap. I’ve certainly been struck both at the national and at the local level in Austin, Texas, at the ways in which the silences about race, um, in conservative media might in fact be the most racist elements of it. The absence of coverage of police brutality and instead the heroic stories of the police and there a lot of heroic stories to tell about the police. But it seems to me it’s deeply problematic when people are getting their news in a way that leads them to completely ignore issues that seems so prominent and urgent to our democracy. It seems to have a very undemocratic effect. Do you think that’s right?

[0:28:18 Speaker 1] Yeah. I mean, the regular journalism. So non conservative media has not always covered itself in glory in covering issues of of racism and racial injustice to begin with. But in conservative media, there is a kind of of mutinous on, due to the extent that it’s not a mutants. When they do talk about it, Um, it is in the framework that you’re talking about. Or, you know, there was this moment after the killing of George Floyd, where there did seem to be, at least in some places, like on Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. There were a times just this kind of shock that something like that could happen that lasted. Look, all of three days before I was replaced with, you know, tropes that air increasingly more about fomenting race war. But then they are really trying to understand issues of injustice and racism in the US. So, silence, Yes. Um, though I think we should also pay attention to the avert things that are being said.

[0:29:20 Speaker 2] So I think that brings us then to to our final question, and we always like to close Nicky on on. A hopeful note is, Zachary said, and on a note that does what you do every day. That brings this vast historical knowledge that you’ve shared with us to thinking about how we can improve our democracy and help our democracy to continue to grow. As Franklin Roosevelt, the inspiration for our podcast, put it, how we can write the next chapter. What would you say? What do you say, Thio young listeners and students and others who want to doom, or of what you’re doing, who want to get involved? And, as you said, redefining what good journalism is in a way that addresses thes concerns and moves us beyond not only a polarized moment but the moment, quite frankly, where people, I think are confused by all the lies and conspiracies around them.

[0:30:11 Speaker 1] So I would say that it starts with knowing what your values are, Um, and that sounds very basic. But I do think that, you know, we often move into professions like academia or journalism, and it’s about subject matter, and subject matter is really important. You know, it’s the things that we’re interested in. But when it comes to figuring out how you’re going to build a career and how you’re going, Thio be an agent of change in the world. One of the things that you first have to get straight is what do you believe and what are your values and what are your clear lines that you won’t cross? Or the things that you want at the center of every work, every bit of work that you dio And once you have that in mind, your career will me and during all sorts of different ways. I think this is much truer today of people who are starting out than it was even when I was starting out. And as the introduction demonstrated, I have had a very meandering career, but if you have that kind of North star of your values, that’s what’s going to keep you with. That’s what’s going to keep you on the right track wherever your career takes you. And if it means that you’re working in ah, high pressured job like journalism, it’s the thing that you hold on to when the pressures of the news cycle and the need for clicks. Um, and they need to be first on a story and the need to get more followers on Twitter when all of those pressures are piling up, knowing what it is that you value and what’s true for you. Having that to hold on to is how you get through those storms.

[0:31:54 Speaker 2] I think that’s that’s really great advice, both the willingness to meander in your career And, uh, yes, you embody that so

[0:32:03 Speaker 1] well. And

[0:32:04 Speaker 2] and the, uh and the steadfastness in one’s pursuit of one’s values. Andi journalism, as you’re saying is, is really, I think, entering a golden age in certain respects as Maura and Mawr, major news outlets and major reporters and young reporters and journalists are beginning to think this through in ways Maybe they didn’t 10 20 years ago. Uh, Nikki, thank you so much for joining us. I know your insights have opened many eyes and help many people to understand these issues. I do wanna remind everyone that if you want much more on this, I really recommend Nicole Hemmer really fantastic book messengers of the right. And of course, you can find her on TV online. All the time. Probably not on Fox News. We won’t see you. There will be Mickey,

[0:32:49 Speaker 1] I think. Probably not. Not a welcome guest in those corridors. Well,

[0:32:56 Speaker 2] thank you again for joining us. Nicole Hemmer as Zachary. Thank you for your wonderful poem. Insightful and humorous as always. And most of all, thank you to our listeners for joining us for this episode of This is

[0:33:10 Speaker 0] Democracy. This’ll Podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Theme music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke, and you can find his music at Harrison Lemke dot com.

[0:33:32 Speaker 1] Subscribe and stay tuned for a new episode every Thursday featuring new perspectives on democracy.

[0:33:43 Speaker 0] Yeah