American Thought Leaders - How One Journalist Is Shattering Echo Chambers: Isaac Saul

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

“One of the major driving factors of the extreme polarization that we’re living through right now is that most news consumers can very easily … tune in somewhere where they are just being force fed worldviews and perspectives that confirm all their priors,” says journalist Isaac Saul.“Think about what media outlets are really making their audience uncomfortable on a regular basis, and there’s very few of them,” he says.After writing for a wide variety of media outlets and seeing some disturbing trends, Saul decided to found Tangle, a newsletter that puts viewpoints from both the left and the right side by side.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.  

One of the major driving factors of the sort of extreme polarization that we're living through right now is that most news consumers can very easily go out into the wild, open their computer, turn on their TVs and tune in somewhere where they are just being force-fed worldviews and perspectives that confirm all their priors. You think about what media outlets are really making their audience uncomfortable on a regular basis, and there's very few of them. After writing for a wide variety of media outlets and seeing many disturbing trends, Isaac Saul decided to found Tangle, a newsletter that puts viewpoints from both the left and the right side by side. We're gonna take you out of the little nice cozy bubble you've been in and you're

going to be made uncomfortable by the news that we're publishing because we're going to expose you to arguments from people across the political spectrum. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Isaac Saul, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me. So let's talk about the insidious forces, to use your language, that shape media today. Most Americans by now are probably familiar with some of them. One of the common examples is advertising revenue or advertising pressure. If you're a big media organization who makes

most of their money off advertising revenue, then that means you necessarily need traffic. You need hits on your website. You need ratings on TV. And that has a tendency to kind of turn media companies into entertainment companies. You have to drive attention, be as sensational as possible. If it bleeds, it leads is kind of the old school newspaper parlance. I've experienced some different, I think, insidious media forces that I think have

driven a lot of the problems that we see today in American media. One of them is groupthink. Roughly 7 percent of all journalists in the media space, at least at sort of traditional media outlets, are Republicans or self-identify as conservative, which is kind of jaw-dropping if you really stop to think about it. I mean, very, very few people representing the mainstream media hold views that roughly half the country holds. So when you're in a newsroom and you're a minority thinker, you might feel compelled

not to necessarily speak your mind or to act as a sort of check on the blind spot that the kind of narrative the rest of the newsroom is putting forward. Part of that also is the sort of hiring bias that we see that comes out of that. I mean, I think like most industries, a lot of people who make their way in media make their way in media because they know people. They have connections from journalism school.

They have connections from previous jobs they've had. And so it's this sort of cycle that feeds itself. It's hard to break into the space if you are a conservative from a rural part of the country who didn't go to Columbia Journalism School or didn't work with somebody at Vox before they got hired at the New York Times or whatever it is. And then some of the stuff that I've written about

is kind of the reflection that we see from these forces onto the space, onto the content that's being produced and how we sort of encounter it. That might look like story selection bias, which is not always so obvious as a headline that looks biased or a sentence in a newspaper that looks biased. This is just, what are we choosing to cover today? What's the story we're going to focus on? The joke that I like to tell and sort of the way to illustrate this that I talk about is,

you know, if an immigrant who's here in our country illegally gets drunk and crashes his car and kills somebody, I would bet good money that that story is going to be covered by Fox News basically 10 times out of 10. If an immigrant comes to our country and is here illegally and ends up creating the next Google, a major tech company that creates hundreds of thousands of jobs and drives billions of dollars of revenue, I would bet my life that the New York Times is going to do a future person on

that story. That story will be life that the New York Times is going to do a feature person on that story. That story will be covered by the New York Times. But they rarely do the reverse. Fox News rarely picks that story up. The New York Times rarely picks up the DUI story. They're selecting the kind of news they want to present to their audiences. And that's a really big challenge.

It's a hard thing to navigate as a newsroom. And it's one of the ways that I think we see bias expressed really often in the news outlets that we're consuming. Well, what about what's called activist journalism? How is activism journalism different from what we think of as journalism? And what problems might that create? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because it's sort of a new wave theory, I guess you could say. It's

kind of a new fresh look on the journalism that maybe a lot of us grew up with. But it's also something that has some roots in older school media from the 18s and early 1900s. And I would say, to define it neatly, I would say it's journalism where there's a desired outcome. You're crafting a story because you want to create layoffs at a major oil company. Or you're crafting a story because you have a worldview, and you see a way to tell a story that is journalism, that kind of affirms that worldview and sort of conveys that And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point.

And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point.

And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. So I've been interviewing fresh out of college journalism students all across the country. And there are a lot of them who, when you ask them what they want to do, it's not about necessarily finding the

most interesting, best story. It's not about sharing some sort of lens for the country to look at ourselves through that includes everybody that is supposed to be balanced or informative or holistic. It's often about I want to tell the story of, you know, the oppression of X, Y, or Z, or I want to tell the story of why this is a really bad thing that, you know, Republicans in Congress have done. And they'll say this explicitly in the interviews, which for the kind of work we're doing is a little bit of a red flag. I mean alarm bells go off when you're like, okay, this is somebody who they want to get results from the work that they're

doing and they're coming into it with a narrow lens about what constitutes good journalism or what constitutes effective journalism, which is often, you know, picking an enemy and making their life miserable. You stand up for your truth. You stand up for what you believe in through your work, which is not really, you know, I'm still pretty young. I'm 34. It's not really how I was taught even 12 years ago, 15 years ago in journalism school. I mean, it's changed for sure. And so I find that a little bit frightening. I find it disconcerting, unsettling.

But I also think that we have an obligation, at least the sort of quote unquote older guard, the people who view it differently, to kind of stand our ground and say, that's not actually the job. The job isn't to take your world view, take how you see things, and convince people of them. The job is to go out into the field with an open mind on a

story and really poke at the truth and try and figure out what an actual attached to reality realistic take on this story is. Or to find views from people who, you know, come at an issue from all across the political spectrum and just put them up next to each other side by side and allow people to make their minds up about, you know, what they should take away from it. I liked how you said attached to reality. When I think of journalism, I think of truth seeking as being the pinnacle. I think it's very hard to do it, as you well know. And indeed, the reason I wanted to invite you on this show is because you have a newsletter which you describe as nonpartisan.

And I want to talk about what that really means. And I can tell that you are absolutely doing this in good faith because I've come across all sorts of examples of people saying they're not partisan. But it's clear they have this kind of exactly activist agenda type thing that we were just discussing. As we've been hiring, we've come across this exact same issue. It was shocking to discover even from one particular person that we did hire, they actually explained to us that one of the top journalism schools in this country was teaching them to do that. But to me, isn't that what you were just describing?

Isn't that actually another word for propaganda? The way we maybe traditionally define propaganda is tied more to what a government wants, a citizenry to believe. But there's this sort of younger generation of reporters and writers who are coming up who believe that if they see the world in a particular way and they earnestly believe that the world is this way, then it is their job to compel their readers, compel their audience to see the world the way that they see it.

Otherwise, I'm sacrificing my morals or I'm doing something wrong by not compelling my audience to see the thing that I'm seeing because the thing I'm seeing is bad and I want them to believe that it's bad. I want to show them that it's bad. And there's just like a general lack of curiosity

I think that exists. And something that strikes me here, right? I think one of the, let's talk about these insidious forces. If you are, for example, the New York Times, which has this generational legacy and cache, all the news that's fit to print, I say that in large scare quotes, people might think that what you're doing is option B, which is truth-seeking journalism, but really your newsroom has shifted with all these young people that are doing precisely what

you just talked about, this activist journalism, and that disconnect, right? Could that be one of the most insidious forces? I'm not saying in New York Times only, I'm saying anywhere where this would happen. In a lot of newsrooms, at least over the last couple of years, especially in the Could that be one of the most insidious forces? I'm not saying in New York Times only, I'm saying anywhere where this would happen. In a lot of newsrooms, at least over the last couple of years, especially in the sort of 2019 to 2022 space, the people who believe that seeking the truth and speaking the truth, their truth, their moral truth

to the world was necessary and a necessary part of journalism, were kind of winning the cultural battles inside these newsrooms. And that is definitely an insidious force. I mean, I don't want to beat up on the New York Times too much because they're not the only people guilty of this kind of thing. But at the New York Times, I mean,

we saw really good reporters leave the paper, in some cases in disgrace, and I'll put I think that's a really good thing. I think that's a really good thing. I think that's a really good thing. I think that's a really good thing. I think that's a really good thing. I think that's a really good thing. I think that's a really good thing. I think that's a really good thing.

I think that's a really good thing. I think that's a really good thing. I think that's a really good thing. I think that's a really good thing. I think that's a really good thing. get forced out out of over publishing an op-ed from a sitting United States Senator. I mean this is kind of, that's bananas stuff to me. I mean that's really, you know, it's this idea that this person who is an elected member of Congress shares a view that a fraction of this newsroom thinks is not fit to print and their response to his argument

being platformed in the New York Times is we have to punish a senior editor who allowed this to happen. And it worked. They were able to do it. I actually think we're seeing some backlash to that now. Some people call it the anti-woke backlash, or whatever you want to say.

But especially in the media space, I think we're seeing a sort of move back to the center, which I'm encouraged by. One of the major driving factors of the sort of extreme polarization that we're living through right now is that most news consumers can very easily go out into the wild, open their computer, turn on their TVs, whatever, and tune in somewhere where they are just being force-fed world views and perspectives that confirm all their priors. If you are a never Trump Republican,

you can just go read the bulwark and the dispatch and never leave that space and never have your views challenged. If you're a dyed-in-the- the wool Democrat, then it's the New York Times opinion page where you're rarely going to encounter, you know, maybe you'll get some David French Republican conservative thought, but you're not going to get like intellectual Trumpism there. And if you're a diehard conservative and you just want to tune into Fox News or Breitbart or whatever it is, and never really see anybody

criticize the Trump presidency, aside from maybe like Jessica Tarlov or something, then you can do that, and it's really easy to do that. And I think the fact that it's so easy to do that is a really scary moment for us in the information ecosystem. I mean, that's a frightening thing to be operating in from my vantage point.

And it's a testament to just how many news organizations are doing this. I mean, you think about what media outlets are really making their audience uncomfortable on a regular basis, and there's very few of them. I mean, I like to believe that we're doing that at Tangle, but I think there's really, really, truly very few of them. And that doesn't seem healthy to me. I mean, I like to believe that we're doing that at Tangle, but I think there's really, really, truly very few of them.

And that doesn't seem healthy to me. Well, and there's theory behind this too. I don't know how familiar you are with Andre Meir's work and his idea in this sort of Marshall McLuhan, you know, the media is the message form. He believes, and he's actually convinced me of this, that the way that technology has developed around the media is inherently siloing through social media and so forth, and that the business of media today largely is serving people things that they already agree, that validate them sometimes.

And the more you can excite them about that, the more they'll pay. And there's a lot of truth to that. And I think the business models have gravitated towards that, just as you suggested. This is obviously a real big issue for someone like the Epoch Times or Tangle, where we're really trying to reach people, I think, who don't already agree with certain viewpoints, right? I mean, this is a foundational issue, because even your marketing team, mean, it's a foundational issue, because even your marketing team, we're both subscription-based.

Your marketing team is saying, hey, I want to do what works. I want to do what works. And what works is what we just said. But you're like, ah, but that doesn't really fit with what we want to be doing. So how do we deal with that? I think this is something we need to solve actually. I don't know the answer to that question. Yeah, it's really difficult. I mean,

the sort of media parlance for it is the audience capture, right? You give your audience something and then you see that they really like it and now you want to serve your audience that thing over and over and over again. I remember during the first Trump presidency, I had a lot of friends and family who were just enraged by the dominance that he had over the media. You know, like they would, they would say to me, I go to the Washington Post or even the conservative people, you know, I go to Fox news, whatever. And it's just Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. Everything on the homepage is just Trump.

It's all stories about him. And I want to read about other things. Like, why do you, the media, why do you guys do this? And the response that I always had is, if you go to the homepage of the New York Times or the Washington Post or Fox News, whatever, and there's a story about, you know, Melania Trump and Donald Trump having some marital issues on the home page next to a story about Republicans passing a new health care bill in the House. Which story do you click? I mean, really, like, how do you vote with your dollars when you're operating in those media ecosystems? And when they're honest with themselves, they all admit

that they click the Trump story, and that's Times, or Wall Street Journal, and you're seeing, oh, god, our readers are devouring Trump stuff, and you're an assignment editor, it's a no-brainer. You're the marketing team. You're on the business side. And you have any kind of pressure you can apply to the editorial side, it's a no-brainer. It's like, they want Trump. Give them more Trump.

That's going to get us the ratings. It's going to get us the credit. It's going to get us the credit. And so you're going to see that. And you're going to see that. And you're going to see that. pressure you can apply to the editorial side, it's a no-brainer. It's like, they want Trump. Give them more Trump. It's going to get us the ratings. It's going to get us the clicks.

And it's a really, really hard thing to sort of wiggle out of, I think. For us at Tangle, the solution has been we tell people up front what we're selling. And what we're selling is we're going to take you out of the little nice cozy bubble you've been in and you're going to be made uncomfortable by the news that we're publishing because we're going to expose you to arguments from people across the political spectrum and you're going to hate some of what you read.

And if we're doing our jobs right, some of what you read will feel really representative of the worldview that you share. You will sort of experience the roller coaster of emotions you might if you were flipping between Fox News and MSNBC rather than just sitting and stewing in one of them and taking all the stuff that you want and being fed all the stuff that you want from these news organizations. That's been helpful for us. I mean, we're saying like this is how we're different. That's sort of the brand that we're selling.

But I think if you're there already and you're entrenched in it, it's really, really hard to get out of. I mean, I don't have a great answer for a more established media organization either. It's a difficult place to be. The thing I like most in the Tangle newsletters is the Sunday Funnies,

or at least that's what I call them in my mind. It's very cool. You show on often the same topic what the left is doodling and what the right is doodling. Very, very valuable. I was going to say column, but I believe that's at the top of the newsletter every Sunday. I look forward to that. Tell me a little bit about how you cook this all up and your background. Actually, you have a very interesting background when it comes to journalism. Yeah, sure. I mean, my sort of Genesis story, I like to say is kind of two part. The first is that I grew up in

Bucks County, Pennsylvania, so a swing county in the most important swing state and it has been for most of my life. And so, you know, growing up somewhere where there's a lot of class divisions and a lot of political divisions, I just have friends and family from all across the political spectrum. And so I, you know, A, socially just empathize with people from a wide range of political backgrounds. And I see my friends or my mom or my uncle or my old teacher in all these different political actors who you encounter in the day-to-day news, I hear them and I see them and I empathize

with them. So I'm open-minded about the state of the country and the two dominant political tribes. And then I left Bucks County to go work in the media space. And the first job I ever got was at the Huffington Post, which I'm sure most of your audience knows is a very liberal, left-leaning paper. And I did not go work at the Huffington Post because I was a bleeding heart liberal

whose dream was to work at the Huffington Post. I worked there because I was a journalism, non-fiction writing major who applied to 40 jobs, and I got one job, and it was at the Huffington Post. And it was a crash course in how that kind of, you know, purposefully slanted media is produced and pushed out the door. And Huffington Post, you know, to their credit, they have some really great talented reporters there.

They focus their ire and their lens on very specific things. You know, the ills of the Huffington Post, but they focus on their ire and their lens on very specific things. The ills of the Republican Party mostly, they focus on people who are of ours next to their name doing bad things. That's the beat if you're at Huffington Post. But I got to see how that sausage was made there. And then after Huffington Post, I worked for Independent

Journal Review, which, go ahead. Before you continue, explain to me. Tell me a little more about how the sausage is made. And we'll talk more about that further. But what do you mean when you say that? What was that? Yeah, sure. I mean, first of all, if you're a younger staff reporter like I was, my job actually at The Huffington Post, I was kind of on the viral trends team initially, which meant we had to drive

traffic to the website. What year is this approximately? 2013, 2014. So in the peak era of clickbait on Facebook and the BuzzFeed domination and that sort of thing, before Facebook turned the knob. And yeah, being on the viral trends team, it's like your success was measured in traffic. That's the knob. And yeah, being on the viral trend scene, it's like your success was measured in traffic.

That's the job is drive people to the website. And then hopefully once they get to the website, they'll click around. We have advertisements all across the site. And so that's how we drive revenue. So sometimes the really simple and obvious thing is like, how do you make a headline clicky? How do you have the

curiosity gap in a story that makes people want to click into it? And that was a big part of my early training. It was almost irrelevant what the content of the story was. It was like we just need to get people onto the page and into the website. What's this going to look like when it's shared on Facebook? That sort of thing? What happened to me when I was there was that I started writing about politics and sports. And I was a sports editor at the school paper in college. I went to the University of Pittsburgh and kind of the intersection of politics and sports and culture.

And I started to see when I was writing political pieces the way certain edits were suggested or how the headline was framed. If I wanted to write a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. Maybe we can use this paragraph to compare Hillary to Bernie and sort of do it in a way that puts him in a more positive light. Like that's the kind of thing that you would experience

in the newsroom where like, well, I don't really want to necessarily say that Bernie's better for a reason, X, Y, or Z. I just want to say that Hillary sucks. And you sort of just see, you have a headline suggested in a story, and you submit it, and then you see the way the headlines change when it's published. And it's clearly done in a way to kind of sensationalize or increase the curiosity gap in the story.

You report something out, and you submit it, and you're told to go get a quote, maybe not from somebody at Heritage Foundation, but a Democratic spokesperson. You should call their office and see how they respond to the story. What do they want to say? And the network of your editors.

If I have an editor who's been working at the Huffington Post for 10 years, who are his contacts? Who are in the Rolodex when we're reporting out a story? Most of them are probably sources from the Democratic Party or extensions of the Democratic Party. So the lens just gets narrowed immediately by walking in the door. And I think I saw that and experienced it. And again, it's like I learned a lot there.

And there's a lot of super bright people who are great reporters who work there. And I saw a similar thing at different news outlets I worked with, you know. You said you went to the Independent Journal Review after that. Yeah. Yeah. And I worked there, and I saw the mirror thing. I mean, a magazine that was sort of going online that has a very explicit conservative slant. And I would submit a story, and the asks from editors would be about seeking out a different quote, or can you

dig into this statistic a little more? Add this stat to balance the piece in a way that, to me, And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point.

And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And the expert that they have is from AEI, or Heritage Foundation. It's not from the Brennan Center for Justice, or whatever it is. So you just see how these forces kind of happen

in the space. And I think for me, it just really opened my eyes to the way all this stuff is being crafted, kind of behind the scenes, both explicitly and intentionally, and also the stuff that these newsrooms can't help. I mean, if you are a journalist or an editor who has no relationships in the conservative movement,

it's so much easier to get a quote from a sitting Democrat than it is from a sitting Republican. You can do it in less time. And so you just go do that, because it's easier, and you're on a deadline, and you have to get in less time. And so you just go do that because it's easier and you're on a deadline and you have to get your story published. But that comes out in the paper as a kind of bias that I think matters and changes the actual thrust of the story and the impact of it. And you saw all this happening.

I mean, tell me, you had the dream to have a kind of a nonpartisan space, but probably you were wondering how that business would work. Tell me what was on your mind how this came about. Yeah, so the true story is that I was working at a company called A+, which was the last job that I had before I started Tangle. We were kind of like a solutions journalism, sort of a sort of anti-mainstream media outlet in a different way.

We were trying to focus on the people fixing things rather than the people breaking things. That was kind of our schtick. That was what we were putting out into the world. It was like, the news is obsessed with all the corrupt politicians. Who are the people doing good? Who are the people finding solutions to big problems?

Let's write stories about them. And that has sort of run its course. The business wasn't doing good? Who are the people finding solutions to big problems? Let's write stories about them. And that has sort of run its course. The business wasn't doing great. I was applying for a bunch of jobs. And I had like seven final interviews at places like the Washington Post or Business Insider, big news outlets that a lot of people know.

And I didn't get any of the jobs. And I was really frustrated and kind of down and out and beat up and was like, this industry's tough. And I knew I was good at what I did. I knew I was a good writer and a good reporter. And I'd always had this kind of idea for a big tent media organization, a place where the people from home, where my friends and family from home could all read the same

thing and actually meet and have like a shared set of facts and also share like a wide range of arguments where they're being exposed to views from the left and exposed to views from the right. And I wanted that big tent media organization to exist somewhere. And so I kind of came up with a formula, which I think is our special sauce, a format for the newsletter, which is what if we just explain the story in the most neutral language possible, which by the way is the hardest part. The introduction is the hardest part of the story to write because you have to do it in

a way that's so, so balanced and so even-handed with neutral language that you're not going to offend the sensibilities of either the left or the right tribe in our country. And then just explicitly say, here are three arguments from people on the left, and here are three arguments from people on the right. And that was the concept. I'm going to just show you the best arguments I can find, the most compelling, convincing arguments I can find

from conservatives and from liberals about this divisive topic. And you can sort of make up your mind. And I sent this newsletter out to a bunch of friends and family and former colleagues, and a kind of beta version of it. And the number one response I got from people was like, well, what do you think? There's no conclusion to this.

I'm so curious. There's this big story about a bill in Congress. You're a politics reporter. You have moderate, centrist-seeming politics. Like, where do you land? I'd be curious to hear your analysis, calls and balls and strikes. So I started writing this sort of mini column in the newsletter that comes last.

That's just called the My Take section, where I give my personal perspective. And it's not meant to be authoritative. It's often written with a lot of humility. I'll say, I don't know the answer here. I feel torn about this issue. I might be wrong, whatever it is. But I think it's an act of transparency.

It's like, I'm the guy delivering this news to you. So I'm gonna be radically honest about where I personally stack up, where I land, and I'm gonna just tell tell you and you can take that as part of the full picture on the news you're digesting. It's like, here are the biases and the worldviews of the person providing the news. And I'm not going to try and inject that bias into the introduction, into the facts of the story. I'm going to contain it in this really isolated space that says, my take, my opinion, this is explicitly my view. You can take it or leave it.

And it gives me space to have some personality in my writing. I think it makes the newsletter a little bit more interesting. It gives people something to attack or to say that they really like. Most of the responses we get are off into the my take section, like the criticisms and the support. And it worked. People seemed to think it was a really good point. I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point. I read your newsletter. Like I just have a better understanding of what the other side thinks, the people I perceive as my enemies, and it makes it easier to kind of see where they're coming from. And I think the reason for that is because both sides are guilty of this thing. It's like elevating the radicals of the other side and making them appear as if they are representative of this thing. It's like elevating the radicals of the other side

and making them appear as if they are representative of the whole. So like, you know, there's a reason in our political dichotomy that every conservative and liberal can tell you about Marjorie Taylor Green and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And it's because they're a little bit more on the fringe of their party.

Maybe they have some views that are on the fringe of their party. Maybe they have some views that are outside the mainstream, outside the norm. And it's because the left takes Marjorie Taylor Greene and they'll find the worst thing she's ever said and her lowest moments as a human being and they will say, this person is representative of the current Republican Party. And the right will take Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and isolate the dumbest thing she's ever said in an interview, and they'll say, this person is representing the Democratic Party. But like, they have a hard time telling you who, you know, Representative Jake Alkenclause

is, who's like a moderate Democrat from Massachusetts, who I think is more representative of the mainstream Democratic Party than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. You know, there are a lot of conservatives out there who are brilliant economists and thinkers who are standing up behind Trump's tariffs right now. Nobody on the left can tell you who they are. They are just obsessed with Peter Navarro and maybe something a little silly or outlandish, he said on cable

television yesterday, because that's what the left is feeding them. And we try and bring forward the people who are making really compelling arguments who are sort of, at least some of our newsletter is representing the best of the left and the best of the right. And I think that changes the way people feel about the country in a positive way.

Well, this is the thing I like. I mean, quite honestly, for me, the issue is believing that something is good faith. And I could very clearly see that what you're doing is good faith. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I think you over-represent certain things and under-represent others, but frankly, that doesn't matter to me. We all have our biases, right? And I like the fact that you like to be transparent about them. Like, you know, no one would ever accuse me of being a pro-communist, for example, right? I have a very strong anti-communist bias. But I would tell you that that is

something learned over 40 years. It's not actually a bias. It's factual. Well, that's actually that's that's an interesting thing. Like what am I partisan, in your view, because I'm very clearly anti-communist, but that's earned. Like at one point, I was I entertained all sorts of, you know, sort of positive ideas about this ideology. And maybe my viewers will be shocked to learn this. But I educated myself, and some of it was being mugged by reality, to be perfectly honest, about this

stuff. And yes, I think it's a terrible ideology that destroys human beings. But I don't think that's not a random assertion that I've come to. Right? Yeah. It's a really great question. I would say I don't try and separate people into who's necessarily partisan or what that means. To me, there are just, to your point, there are hacks and there are good faith actors. And there's a lot of both in the media space. I mean, there's a lot of hacks, but there are good faith actors. And there's a lot of both in the media space.

I mean, there's a lot of hacks. But there are good faith actors. There are people who are, they bring people onto their shows, they do interviews like this, and they do them with genuine curiosity. They don't do it to try and get the gotcha question and the viral moment and confront somebody or make them look as bad as possible. They do it because they're interested in the world around And so I sort of view the media landscape that way. I would not say that what you've experienced or where you've landed necessarily means you're a partisan.

I think by far the most important thing is that you have to be a part of the media landscape. And I think that's a very important thing. And I think that's a very important thing. And I think that's a very important thing. And I think that's a very important thing. And I think that's a very important thing. And I think that's a very important thing. And I think that's a very important thing where you've landed necessarily means you're a partisan.

I think by far the most important part is that you have some clarity about your views and you can explain where they came from. Often what readers say to me when I publish a My Take that they really strongly disagree with is, I don't think you're right about this issue, but it was really interesting to see your thought process and I can at least understand how you got there. I mean, the amount of positive feedback I get

just by showing my work, by saying like, I feel this way because X thing happened to my dad or my mom experienced this health issue, and I saw how the system worked, and our lives were impacted so deeply by it. So it's really hard for me to empathize with this view, because I went through this thing, and this is what I saw, and I can point to this research to buttress my personal experience.

And so I land here. And people are so much more comfortable with that. I mean, a good example is my dad drove Uber for a period of time in pseudo-retirement, really out of financial need. He was struggling, and he had to make ends meet, and he was driving Uber. And Uber made some policy changes to how they were paying out their drivers. And we actually did an addition on it.

It was part of our coverage of some of the gig worker stuff that was happening in California, some of the laws around there. And so I could say in that piece, X percentage of Uber drivers are going to have their wages impacted in this way according to this study by this nonprofit. Or I could say, I just got off the phone with my dad who drives Uber six days a week and he showed me the receipts and how much money he was making in April and now how much money

is he making in May because of the change that happened. That's a way more compelling story. And people empathize with him more because it's like, it's my dad. I want, he's being hurt by this and so it's really hard for me to endorse this thing, even if I might be able to see the good or the justification around the policy change. And so I think just like being transparent about your views is the important part. To go back to the opening question, the insidious thing, the thing that happens at a lot of media organizations is a journalist has a perspective that they're not transparent about in their reporting,

but they will seek out somebody who they know shares that view and they'll insert the perspective into the story. You know, if you're covering an issue on immigration and you have a specific view about immigration and you interview five experts, and one of those experts says something that really aligns with your worldview and you decide to lead the article with that quote. You know, that's the first quote in the article, and it's framing the whole story. That's inserting your bias into the story,

and it's doing it in an insidious, not very transparent way. What our format allows me to do is say, like, this is my view explicitly, and here's how I got here, and I'm not going to try and slide it into other parts of the newsletter or the podcast. I'm just going to tell you what I actually think in this really isolated space. Now, I've been thinking about this issue of partisanship as we're talking here. So let's take an issue and let's take an 80-20 issue. Okay, men and women's sports. Okay, although some people would describe, would even use a different term to describe that

phenomenon, right? But men and women's sports, an 80-20 issue, most Republicans, most independents, and frankly, most Democrats actually agree that that's a bad idea. Okay. And however, the Democratic Party approach to that issue is that this is something that should be allowed. If you're reporting on this issue, and you've even used the term, you know, men and women's sports, that you were told that you're being partisan. Right. But I know

that just seems like an objective statement. I don't want to use other terminology, which has been hoisted on me by activists. I'm just sharing this particular thing. Does that make one partisan? Because someone says you're partisan. I think you're zeroing in on the hardest parts of our job, at Tangle at least, like the most difficult thing. Like I agree, it's an 80-20 issue that people don't want trans women in women's sports. That is clear.

The polling is pretty explicit about it. Now is it an 80-20 issue that Americans want you to refer to them as men in women's sports or trans women in women's sports? I don't know. I would say the polling on that's probably closer to 50-50. Like I think there are a lot of Americans who are like, I don't want this person on my Seventh grade girls softball team, but I'll like respect the life decision she made. It's not my business, whatever, you know We run into this with issues like trans coverage. I mean, this is one of the biggest ones. It's one of the most hot button issues.

Language choices around Israel and Gaza. Language choices around race, whether to capitalize the B in black or not in our articles. I mean, that really, we don't. And that incenses some liberal readers of ours. And we had to explain why we came to this conclusion and why we made that choice. I mean, it's the really sticky stuff.

Again, my experience has been, if we show our work, if we explain it, like for instance, on the trans issue, because I'm not trying to dodge here, like we refer to trans women in sports. Like we wouldn't say men in women's sports. Why do we make that choice? Well, generally speaking, what we do across the political landscape with these

like special interest groups or however you want to describe, you know, more like political movements, is we respect the way people ask to be described. Like I would never, you would never call pro-life people anti-abortion unless I see them doing that in their own language on their organizational website. When we talk about pro-life Americans, a lot of liberals write in and say, they're not pro-life.

They're anti-women and anti-life, and if anything, they're anti-abortion. And I say, well, they're a pro-life group. And that's how they describe themselves. And there's like a degree of respect that we're having in the dialogue where I'm going to call them what they are asking to be called by, especially if like everybody knows what I'm talking about. Like when I say trans women, I'm not obscuring the truth.

Like these are, like you might feel, like you might look at a trans woman and say, okay, this is a man, it's not a woman, but I'm saying it's a trans woman. And like, you know what I mean, I know what I'm talking about. And we're respecting them and we're like, you know, appreciating how they asked to be called

in the dialogue. And that is for our brand is the right choice. It's like, that's the way that we navigate that. Because even if it's an 80-20 issue, I don't want to ignore the 20. I mean, 20% of the 230 million adults in our country is tens of millions of people. And they should have a voice in our newsletter

and feel represented. That's not fringe enough for me to just exclude them. But we face, if we don't explain why we're doing that or how we're, the explanation I just gave, maybe that's compelling to some of your audience, maybe some of them hear that, like total BS, liberal softball stuff, whatever. I'm fine with where you come out on that,

but we're gonna explain it because I think, to the degree we wanna be a big tent media organization and invite everybody in, showing our work and being transparent about why we're making the choices we make is a good way to do it. So what I might say in response, or someone might say in response, is validating a mistruth no matter how much someone wants to believe that, for example, makes its way

into statistics. And this has actually happened where in some states, statistics have been adulterated. It's actually impossible to track men and women because you have people who are biologically male that are now being included in women's statistics because that reality has been obfuscated because of this change in language. So what I'm trying to say is... So, just to clarify, you're saying like people are filling out like a government survey or something and identifying themselves as a woman and that's obscuring... Or birth certificates. People are changing their sex on their birth certificates. And now basically the medical system is considering them to be a different sex, which they're not.

Again, they can't really change that. They can change it and they can simulate it, but they can't change it. But what I'm trying to say is that it has profound when these kinds of biological realities are compromised, that actually has a profound impact down the line. Because we're coming back to this question of trying to be truthful. I'm all for respecting how someone chooses to live, but there's profound consequences if you agree to things which you know aren't reality, even if it helps someone feel better about themselves.

Yeah, no, I think it's an interesting point. I would say that is maybe a more extreme example of how language can impact public policy or the scientific outcome of a study or a research or whatever it is. I think the challenge for us would be a lot harder if I was in the position of being a government agency thinking about how to track this thing or being a member of a board on some scientific organization doing a study about something where the outcome is heavily impacted

by whether a person identifying as male or female was actually biologically male or female. The challenges for us are more like if we're describing a bill in Congress related to trans issues and it's sort of being generally called trans health care or gender affirming care, like is that, are we obscuring the truth by describing it that way? In my view, yes. So like what we want to tell our readers is like this isn't we're not going to call you know everything

under the umbrella of gender affirming care that is like referring to a 25 year old person who's transitioned by their preferred pronouns and also performing you know top surgery on a 14 year old as the same like as gender affirming care we'll be really specific about, is this bill banning pronoun use in schools, or is it prohibiting surgery for minors? And to Americans, they're really different things. Those are really different questions. So I think about how the truth is kind of being obscured in

our reporting with the sort of language dictates that we might have. I wouldn't so much worry about the outcome of a study or something like that with our choices though. I appreciate that point. I mean it's a really weighty response to some of the decisions that we're making. And I think again, like for us the North Star is we want to be this big tent media organization where we're bringing these people in and they're feeling like their views are

being respected, their voices are being respected, and they're also being challenged. And that feels like the best way to do it for us. But yeah, no, I mean, it's a well-heard point. I think like the big issue people have with this is if someone basically says, you need to agree with my conception of myself and my world view, and if you don't, that's a problem. Yeah.

I mean, in both my personal life and my job as a media executive, I obviously reject that framing. I mean, often reject that framing. I think the, first of all, like, anytime there's an issue of compelled speech, my hackles go up and I feel my blood curdling. I think Democrats in the left have rightly paid a huge price for being the sort of language policing party.

I mean that is, I think Mike Peska recently called Democrats like the HR department of political parties, which I thought was a really funny way to put it. And Donald Trump sitting in the White House and we've seen a huge kind of anti-woke backlash because of that. So I'm not doing that because I feel compelled by them, or I feel the speech pressure, as much as I'm doing it because I think there's a better chance of bringing them into our information ecosystem if they feel respected at the front door.

I'll give you maybe an example of how this might play out in a positive way, even if you're on the other side of the issue. I have trans readers, obviously, you know, and I know trans people in my personal life. And when they feel respected at the front door of the news organization and they come inside and then they encounter views that are like really fundamentally questioning the way that they see the world, their own personal identity,

existence, whatever it is, they're a lot more open-minded about that perspective. They're a lot more ready for dialogue than if at the front door there's somebody just saying, I refuse to call you he or she or use your name or they dead name you or whatever. When they don't encounter that immediately, they'll actually come have the conversation.

I've written in my take in the newsletter about the unfairness of trans women and women's sports in many contexts, you know, whether it's like Leah Thomas swimming or the boxing controversy we had at the Olympics or whatever, just like talked about the science of it and like the unsatisfactory answers that the left has in many scenarios.

And I know trans women who I'm friends with who really, really, really, really strongly disagree with me on that issue, but they feel respected by the way that I am addressing with them, by the way I'm talking about it. And then there's actual dialogue there where maybe I can move their position or maybe they move my position. But like, oftentimes I at least find that I can going to be able to do that. But I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.

I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.

I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.

I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. We are a pluralistic society. We can choose who's not American and who comes in, like immigration, we have control over those things, we can pull certain levels, but fundamentally, we are a place that's built on pluralism. That is really, really hard. It's not an easy thing to live amongst people who don't see the world the way you do.

But like, I don't want to live in Iran, even if, you know, even if the sort of homogeneous view was one that I really liked or agreed with. It's not interesting to me. And there's something that's like really fundamentally, you know, anti liberty about it. So these people exist. I think there's, you know, to your point, I think if you're on a particular side of this issue, maybe you see that as like seeding ground or feeding a delusion or whatever it is, but like they're here and I respect and love some of them and I want to like, I want to live shoulder to shoulder with them the same way I do with people who I, you know, have all kinds of different worldview and political disagreements that we might say are like, you know, breaking

with reality or whatever it is. So that's the society we've signed up for. It's uncomfortable, but it's true. And like, I have to walk the walk on that. I mean, to do the job I do, I can't just decide what the truth is. I have to kind of invite all these perspectives in and let our audience make the decision for themselves. Okay, very interesting. Well, I'm really looking forward to keeping up with my tangle reading. I don't read it every day, but I do find it valuable actually in

bringing in some of these other views that I might not come across otherwise. This has been a fascinating conversation. A final thought as we finish? I mean, look, first of all, I would say if your audience is interested in the offer to step out of the bubble that they might be in or to just like generally get a more holistic, nuanced views on the day's news, come give us a shot. It's free. ReadTangle.com is the place to read.

And I would say we're living in a really divisive and kind of broken time where we're all sort of stepping into our little social circles and existing in our information silos and I don't think doing enough interacting with us. And one of the things that I hope to do with this news organization and that I try to do daily in my personal life is like just make contact with people who you might disagree with and break bread with them, share a beer with them, have honest conversations with them.

I really, you know, I know it's so cheesy and it's so corny to say, but like I really genuinely think our country could use a little bit more of that right now. I hear it from readers. They say, hey, I've got this Trump voter next door to me with a big Trump flag and I'm super liberal and you know, I just, I don't know what to do or how to approach it approach it I'm like buy a six pack of beer and go knock on his door and ask if he wants to sit on the porch and chat for a bit and get to know each other I mean really I know it's a silly answer but like I've seen it work and I think it does work and I'm trying to bring people together a little bit not to hold hands

and agree and not to do the kumbaya thing whatever it is but just to say like we see you we can exist together we we can have these fair minded disagreements and hopefully not rip each other's heads off for the next 50 years or whatever it's going to be. Well Isaac Saul, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thanks for having me. Thank you all for joining Isaac Saul and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.