I propose hanging on to some basic tenets of traditional journalistic ethics: Verification and fact-checking, editorial independence from political parties and corporations, clarity and transparency about financial and political conflicts of interest, and deep, thorough sourcing. I also join a chorus of journalists who have been gradually replacing objectivity with the practice of radical transparency about both our values and methodologies. Finally, I think defining our values as journalists when journalism is under attack means admitting that we are activists and becoming clear what we are activists for.
- Lewis Raven Wallace in The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity (2019)
Hey friend,
For my thesis with the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University, I’ll be producing a special eight-episode series of interviews here on The Kennel. Each episode will be uploaded Friday. (Except this week…)
I’ve got a lot of great discussions to share with ya, so hit the subscribe button to get emails and notifications through the Substack app.
Below, I’m including a copy of the research paper I wrote for my Honors Research Seminar class in the Fall 2023 semester.
There’s already been some new things that I’ve discovered about this topic that I’ll address in the written portion of the thesis, which I’ll be sharing with you soon enough. For now, I wanted to share that paper on here, as it served as a central inspiration for this thesis, and it should give you an idea of where I’m heading with this project.
But first, a few other things I should share, since I’ve been absent on here for over a couple months…
Other Shit To Check Out:
The Unnatural State of Affairs Continues!
Every Monday 5-7 PM, I’ll be broadcasting The Unnatural State of Affairs on WMTS 88.3 FM, MTSU’s student radio station—WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THIS WEEK, HOWEVER!
The first Unnatural State of Affairs episode for this semester will broadcast on Wednesday, September 4th 5-7 PM.
This Monday is Labor Day, so the doors to the campus building will be locked when I would normally do the show.
As always, you can expect to find the uncensored commentary segments available on The Kennel after the broadcast.
Physicians for Social Responsibility Internship
This summer I interned with the Physicians for Social Responsibility’s Nuclear Weapons Abolition Program in Washington D.C. There, I worked on a report discussing the influence of the ICBM Lobby, which you can find here. I recorded myself reading the paper too, which I’ll be sharing in this week’s Unnatural State of Affairs episode, so again…
TUNE IN THIS WEDNESDAY, 5-7 PM!!!!
Labor Coverage with MTSU Sidelines
I haven’t said much on here about my reporting with MTSU Sidelines on the school’s United Campus Workers’ fight for biweekly pay.
That fight continues!
Go check out my portfolio page for links to everything I’ve written on it so far.
Honors Research Seminar Paper
Independently Produced Political Podcasts Foster Audience Trust
By Ethan Schmidt
Abstract
Independently produced political podcasts foster audience trust. The same cannot be said for mainstream news media, which is witnessing record-low levels of trust. This can be attributed to an extensive series of failures to cover critical events adequately, as well as internal structures that incentivize profits over quality information. While the independent nature of such podcasts provides numerous benefits, such as a greater ability to weave together more thorough analysis and complicated topics, that same characteristic allows for bad actors to amass power online by pretending to rebel against the status quo, while actively defending it. A greater trust in independent political commentary podcasts can be established by embracing a more honest and subjective approach to delivering and commenting on the news, as well as establishing a standard code of ethics for podcasters, journalists, and independent political content creators in general.
Independently produced political podcasts foster audience trust. The status quo of the dominant, heavily consolidated, and corporate-owned news media environment continues to profit off the peddling of careless misinformation, damaging the trusting relationship that it used to hold with citizens. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky examine one of the main causes of this poor news coverage in Manufacturing Consent ([1988] 2008), arguing that the structure of mainstream news outlets allow for a lack of coverage on critical current events, which favor the interests of the ruling class. The writers propose a “Propaganda Model” (62) comprised of five filters that outline how for-profit news outlets determine what information gets published or broadcasted:
(l) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) "flak" as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism. (62)
Herman and Chomsky then apply this model to six case studies, which examine for-profit U.S. news outlets’ coverage of foreign affairs, affirming the model’s efficacy. Recent academic work has reaffirmed the Propaganda Model’s applicability to today’s current events (Boyd-Barrett 2015; Mullen 2018) and presented ways in which it could be improved (Goodwin 1994; Hyzen 2023).
The public senses the flaws of mainstream news media. Americans’ trust in mass media has hit a record low. 38% of respondents to a recent Gallup poll said they have no trust in news media at all, 34% reported little trust, and only 28% said they have a great deal or fair amount of trust (Brenan 2022). The decentralized nature of the podcast holds the potential to regain the trust of citizens.
Yet, the dwindling faith in mainstream news media has left a power vacuum for either unreliable or blatantly dishonest actors to fill it. By simply donning the façade of an anti-establishment ethos, toxic podcasts hosts—like those of the “Intellectual Dark Web”—easily convince new listeners to trust them (Heiselberg and Have 2023; Fletcher and Park 2017).
Not all of the podcasters filling this vacuum pose such threats. In fact, they pose a unique capability to provide thorough analysis of wider societal issues with a greater density of information while utilizing a comedic approach to delivering news and commentary (Ödmark 2021). The use of a comedic frame in presenting the news, however, requires the reexamination of a central journalistic principle: Objectivity. Can any news media organization be truly objective? Is it enough for journalists to simply strive for objectivity and shrug their shoulders if they do not meet that standard? Or, is it time to accept a different understanding of the limitations of news media, and embody that understanding in the blossoming medium of the podcast to re-establish trust with audiences who feel betrayed by the shortcomings of today’s mainstream media networks?
A change to this status quo in traditional news media is necessary, as a functioning information ecosystem is crucial to the maintenance of a healthy and functioning democracy. The Washington Post’s tagline may be trite, but it is true: “Democracy dies in darkness” (2023). Can the podcast medium reinvigorate or help revitalize trust in U.S. news media? If so, how should podcasters tailor their content to maximize audience trust?
Corporate Filters
Political podcasts’ rejection of corporate filters strengthens their credibility. As the prevalence of independent news media has expanded with the growing adoption of the internet as a primary source for information, the once unquestionable credibility of major news institutions has cracked in recent years. Coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq demonstrated how even the most highly respected news outlets can devastatingly fail to provide fair coverage of a major foreign policy event to their audiences (Arzon 2005). The lack of substantial warning from the supposed “watchdogs” about the 2008 Great Recession further highlighted U.S. news outlets’ inability to inform their consumers (Rios-Rodríguez, Dios-Vicente, and López-Iglesias 2022). Most recently, a trove of documents released during litigation of the now-settled lawsuit between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems revealed that prominent hosts on the most-watched cable news channel (Katz 2023)—which once boasted to be “fair and balanced” (Grynbaum 2017)—deliberately spread false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election (Folkenflik and Yang 2023; Timm, Terkel, and Gregorian 2023).
The structures of these dominant outlets fuel such poor coverage. As Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model articulates, the for-profit motive of major news networks—“the first filter” ([1988] 2008, 63)—demands that their owners prioritize profits and consolidation above adequate news coverage (62-73). This incentive to cut costs and maximize revenue encourages a heavy reliance on the subsidies of advertisers, whose money wields massive power over what content gets disseminated, forming a second filter of information (73-8). Mainstream news outlets’ submission to the profit motive also dictates a “need [for] a steady, reliable flow of the raw material of news” (78), meaning that news media personnel must maintain efficient access to powerful government officials and business executives to produce a continuous stream of content. Journalists achieve this constant production of content by facilitating relatively uncritical relationships with their powerful sources. The maintenance of such relationships acts as the third filter in the Propaganda Model (78-86). The fear of catching flak—”negative responses to a media statement or program” (86)—constitutes the model’s fourth filter (86-9). The final filter, “anticommunism as a control mechanism” (89), seeks to ensure that any content which can be construed as pro-communist will not be disseminated (89-91). These five filters predict that the content produced by news media organizations will favor the interests of their wealthy owners and the U.S. government. While some academics (Boyd-Barrett 2015; Goodwin 1994; Pedro-Carañana, Broudy, and Klaehn 2018) remain captivated by the Propaganda Model more than thirty years after its introduction, that fascination lies in the understanding that the aging theory requires an update.
The Propaganda Model ignores the influence of concrete journalism practices on the quality of news coverage. While sociologist Jeff Goodwin praises its compelling dissection of the for-profit news outlets’ structural incentives that lead to poor coverage, he notes that it fails to account for the tangible newsroom operations that directly impact the news that gets published (1994, 109). Goodwin suggests that further research into pro-establishment news media bias should attempt to integrate Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model with the “every day journalistic practices that produce the news” (110), whose effects have been examined in works like Mark Fishman’s Manufacturing the News (1980). The Model operates within a limited perspective, but that limited perspective still demonstrates how the structure of for-profit news outlets partly leads to poor coverage on current events.
The U.S. population—whether aware of the model’s expectations for corporate news outlets’ reporting or not—share a growing sense of distrust in these dominant institutions. Richard Fletcher and Sora Park found that among 20,000 respondents across 12 different nations, U.S. respondents prefer “non-mainstream” news sources the most (2017, 1291). While the 2023 Reuters Institute Digital News Report showed 32% of respondents affirming their trust in U.S. news media (Newman et al. 2023, 109)—a 6% increase from the previous year’s report—that percentage is well below the global average of 40% (10). Further, Reporters Without Borders’ 2023 Press Freedom Index ranked the U.S. at 45 out of 180 countries—a decrease of three points from last year’s index. Part of their justification for the ranking included “the unprecedented levels of distrust in the American media” (2023). This low trust creates a power vacuum in the news media ecosystem for independent news and news commentary podcasters to fill.
From a technical standpoint, the establishment of audience trust is a good podcasting technique. Lene Heiselberg and Iben Have examined Danish listeners’ expectations for podcast hosts in 2023, finding—among other important qualities—that hosts must demonstrate “insight into the world of the target group” (639). More specifically, “the participants expect a podcast host to be one with the audience and understand their way of life, as well as what is currently running through their minds” (639). Independently produced political podcasts inherently provide an insight into the world of their target groups. Their very existence addresses—or at least aims to address—their target audiences’ deep concerns with the efficacy of established news media outlets, as such podcasts provide an alternative to these institutions. Additionally, at an international scale, low trust in mainstream news correlates with a preference for non-mainstream news sources (Fletcher and Park 2017, 1292), meaning that those turning to independent news and news commentary podcasts might largely be doing so in rejection of established news media organizations.[1]
The “Intellectual Dark Web” (IDW) embodies this capitalization on distrust in mainstream news media. The term, coined by Barry Weiss in a 2018 New York Times opinion article (Scripps 2020, 31), refers to “a virtual network of self-proclaimed cultural critics who host various media within the realm of online pseudo-academia” (Mannella 2021, 2). The most prominent members of the IDW include the Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro (2021), psychologist Jordan Peterson (2021), conservative political commentator Dave Rubin (Weiss 2018), and Joe Rogan (2018)—all of whom host popular podcasts and proudly brand them as independently-produced. IDW podcasters amass hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views per episode (2018), but the IDW’s reputation for slanted, obstinate, and outright bigoted news commentary (Manella 2021; Scripps 2020, 32) should not result in such popularity. Despite their lack of concern for providing accurate information, and despite the tendencies for some of these IDW figures to promote their own agendas that encourage the maintenance of the status quo (Mannella 2021, 12-6)—contrary to their claims of being anti-establishment—these podcasters have captured the attention of massive audiences. Why? “The public seems to trust them because they operate outside of the norms of institutional traditional journalism where trust is in decline, not despite that fact” (Scripps 2020, 32). At this moment, a podcaster’s mere appearance of challenging corporate news media hegemony—whether substantial or not—strengthens their perceived credibility.
The Stimulating Brew of Comedy and Journalism
The truth is funny.
- Charna Halpern, Del Close, and Kim “Howard” Johnson in Truth in Comedy (1994, 15)
The mixture of comedy and journalism potently engages audiences. Caty Borum Chattoo and Lindsay Green-Barber examined the relationship between comedy and political journalism through their research on a collaborative effort between the New Jersey-based Dirty Little Secrets investigative reporting project and stand-up comedians (2021). The effort resulted in two stand-up comedy shows featuring acts that all provided factually-accurate commentary on the egregious instances of environmental contamination in New Jersey—the sole focus of Dirty Little Secrets’ reporting. Borum Chattoo and Green-Barber conducted surveys on audiences after the two shows, finding that audiences were overwhelmingly entertained and informed by the events, expressed that the issue of environmental contamination felt like a more pressing matter to them, and reported a willingness to act on the issue (210). “Comedy, therefore,” the researchers concluded, “may be an effective way to engage audiences with serious journalistic information and facts” (210).
Sara Ödmark’s “Making News Funny: Differences in News Framing between Journalists and Comedians” (2021) suggests that this effect also applies to political commentary podcasts, but it indirectly raises questions about the validity of a central journalistic principle. Ödmark compared 5,119 pieces of traditional Swedish news content (“vertical media” (1541)) with 104 episodes from two different comedic Swedish political podcasts (“horizontal media” (1541)), finding that the podcasts more frequently focused their coverage on topics concerning the public (1550), provided a greater amount of information about their stories (1550), and “present the news overwhelmingly with a personal and emotional framing, while the vertical media and national radio journalists are more detached from the material” (1551). The podcasts’ heightened focus on a “societal level” (1548) demonstrates that they performed more effectively than traditional Swedish news media at informing listeners about political events and features a greater density of information on the topics covered. This is where comedically-framed political podcasts excel. Evaluating these podcasts’ strong tendencies to indulge in personal and emotional framing, however, requires the scrutiny of a fundamental journalistic tenet: Objectivity.
The concept of objectivity in reporting is a farce. Considering the American Psychological Association’s definition of objectivity—“the tendency to base judgments and interpretations on external data rather than on subjective factors, such as personal feelings, beliefs, and experiences” (APA, 2018)—the possibility of objectivity in reporting has never been possible. How can news media outlets be objective when their stories must rely on human sources who convey their own “personal feelings, beliefs, and experiences” (APA, 2018) that inform their worldviews? And what “external data” (APA, 2018) can reporters and content creators utilize to determine which of these sources should be included in their content? Some journalists may “understand objectivity as aspirational, but agree to the attempt” (Wallace 2019, 53), but this agreement lacks an understanding of the history behind the development of an “objective” press.
This standard was first invoked by news outlets to suppress journalists’ rights to form labor unions and collectively bargain with their employers. Lewis Raven Wallace illuminates this history in The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity (2019), which in part examines the 1937 Supreme Court case Associated Press v. National Labor Relations Board (62-3). In 1935, the Associated Press fired reporter Morris Watson for his membership with the growing American News Guild, reasoning that his affiliation with the union prevented him from providing objective reporting (62). While the First Amendment protects publishers’ right to fire employees for perceived poor work, “the AP blundered, putting too thin a veil over the fact that they’d fired Watson for organizing with the Newspaper Guild” (62). The Court ruled in favor of Watson (63). “The majority view was that the AP was simply using the argument of potential bias to thwart organizing, and Watson was reinstated” (63). Not only is true objectivity in news reporting simply not possible, but news media outlets have also held journalists to this impossible standard to prevent them from amassing the collective power to determine the conditions of their employment.
Considering the fallacy of objectivity in news reporting and ulterior motives of news outlets in expecting reporters to adhere to such impossible standards, Ödmark’s findings about the use of negative personal and emotional framing in political podcasts do not imply an inferior quality to the medium, but rather demonstrate the tactics that hosts must employ to attract listeners. Heiselberg and Have found that podcast listeners also expect hosts to “attract and retain attention” (2023, 641), exude “engagement and passion” (642), and demonstrate “self-disclosure (a willingness to share personal accounts)” (641). The findings suggest that podcast listeners do not turn to a podcast simply for a purely objective delivery of information. They want a personality that can form a “parasocial relationship” (641) with them—a “one-sided relationship” (Cleveland Clinic 2023) in which the host knows nothing about the listener. In the case of political podcasts, then, the pursuit of pure objectivity will not engage listeners. Rather, a host’s willingness to disclose their subjective truth—composed of their own analysis of the news, disclaimers on unknown factors, and acknowledgements of the vulnerabilities in their arguments—will engage listeners.
Conclusion
Independent news and news commentary podcasts foster audience trust. The future of the news media industry remains hazy and bleak, but the growing power of independent political podcasts, as well as their capability to include a greater density of information and analysis than traditional news media, are a source of hope for positive change. And while the established standard of objectivity in news reporting no longer remains true, that does not mean all journalistic principles should be abandoned. New codes of ethics need to be crafted not just for journalists, but for news content creators of all types—podcasters, YouTubers, Twitch live streamers, Instagram influencers, TikTok influencers, and more. Lewis Raven Wallace concluded The View from Somewhere with a good starting point for what these codes should look like:
I propose hanging on to some basic tenets of traditional journalistic ethics: Verification and fact-checking, editorial independence from political parties and corporations, clarity and transparency about financial and political conflicts of interest, and deep, thorough sourcing. I also join a chorus of journalists who have been gradually replacing objectivity with the practice of radical transparency about both our values and methodologies. Finally, I think defining our values as journalists when journalism is under attack means admitting that we are activists and becoming clear what we are activists for (2019, 211).
References
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Boyd-Barrett, Oliver. 2017. “Ukraine, Mainstream Media and Conflict Propaganda.” Journalism Studies 18, no. 8: 1016-34. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2015.1099461.
Brenan, Megan. 2022. “Americans' Trust In Media Remains Near Record Low.” Gallup, October 18, 2022. https://news.gallup.com/poll/403166/americans-trust-media-remains-near-record-low.aspx
Chattoo, Caty, and Lindsay Green-Barber. 2021. “An Investigative Journalist and a Stand-Up Comic Walk into a Bar: The Role of Comedy in Public Engagement with Environmental Journalism.” Journalism 22, no. 1 (January): 196-214. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918763526.
Cleveland Clinic. 2023. “Friend or Faux: Are Parasocial Relationships Healthy?” Health Essentials. July 5, 2023. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/parasocial-relationships.
Fishman, Mark. 1980. Manufacturing the News. Austin: University of Texas Press.
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Grynbaum, Michael M. 2017. “Fox News Drops ‘Fair and Balanced’ Motto.” New York Times, June 14, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/business/media/fox-news-fair-and-balanced.html?unlocked_article_code=1._0w.fFH4.jznidi0AFmnu&smid=url-share.
Halpern, Charna, Del Close, and Kim “Howard” Johnson. 1994. Truth in Comedy. Englewood, CO: Meriwether Publishing.
Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. (1988) 2008. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. 2nd updated edition, with a 2002 introduction by the authors and a new afterword by Edward S. Herman. London: Bodley Head. https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/5537300/mod_resource/content/1/Noam%20Chomsky_%20Edward%20S.%20Herman%20-%20Manufacturing%20Consent_%20The%20Political%20Economy%20of%20the%20Mass%20Media-Bodley%20Head%20%282008%29.pdf.
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Hyzen, Aaron. 2023. “Leaks and Lawfare: Adding a Legal Filter to Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 40, no. 1 (May): 55-69. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2023.2204169.
Katz, A.J. 2023. “Here Are Cable News’ Nielsen Ratings for Q3 2023.” TVNewser, September 26, 2023. https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/here-are-cable-news-nielsen-ratings-for-q3-2023/538247/.
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Newman, Nic, Richard Fletcher, Kirsten Eddy, Craig T. Robertson, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen. 2023. Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2023-06/Digital_News_Report_2023.pdf.
Ödmark, Sara. 2021. “Making News Funny: Differences in News Framing between Journalists and Comedians.” Journalism 22, no. 6 (June): 1540-57. https://doi-org.ezproxy.mtsu.edu/10.1177/1464884918820432.
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Sang, Yoonmo, Sunyoung Park, Jiwon Kim, and Sora Park. 2023. “News Podcast Use, Press Freedom, and Political Participation: A Cross-National Study of 38 Countries.” International Journal of Communication 17: 1402-24. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/17247.
Scripps, Jim. 2020. Podcasting and the Rise of the Public Intellectual: Viewing an Emergent Group of Media Personalities Through the Prism of Antonio Gramsci’s ‘The Intellectuals.’ MA thesis, University of Nevada, Reno. https://ezproxy.mtsu.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/podcasting-rise-public-intellectual-viewing/docview/2455530062/se-2?accountid=4886.
Timm, Jane C., Amanda Terkel, and Dareh Gregorian. 2023. “'I Hate Him Passionately': Tucker Carlson Was Fed Up with Trump after the 2020 Election.” NBC News, March 7, 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/private-fox-news-text-messages-emails-released-dominion-suit-rcna72693.
Wallace, Lewis Raven. 2019. The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Weiss, Barry. 2018. “Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web.” New York Times, May 8, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Bk0.05oz.swIBaKS4kW0D&smid=url-share.
[1] Fletcher and Park also note that “the association between very low trust and non-mainstream preference is…significantly weaker…in the United States” (1291-2).
