The Daily Signal - INTERVIEW | Emily Jashinsky on The Rise of Independent Media

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

CNN, MSNBC, and ABC News all have ratings in the toilet. Public trust in mainstream media outlets has plumbed new lows as Americans realize they’re being fed a steady diet of propaganda. So what’s going to fill that hole in the information ecosystem? Programs such as “Counterpoints,” a new digital talk show hosted by Ryan Grim from The Intercept and Emily Jashinsky from The Federalist, hope to cut past the politics and strike straight at the truth. Jashinsky joins this episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the rise of independent media outlets and how they’re taking on the giants in the industry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get the yes you've been waiting for at Capital One.ca.ca. slash yes. Terms and conditions apply. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, September 20th, and I'm Doug Blair. What is a good source of news? It's certainly not CNN. It's certainly not MSNBC, but all mainstream legacy outlets seem to be having the same problem. People just don't trust them anymore. So where do you go? Well, Emily Jashinsky, a cultural editor at the Federalist, and a new host of Counterpoints on the Breaking Points Network, has some ideas about the few of media. We sat down at the National Conservatism Conference in Miami, Florida last week to discuss the future of media and how Americans can be better informed. Our interview right

after the break. As conservatives, sometimes it feels like we're constantly on defense against bad ideas. Bad philosophy, revisionist history, junk science, and divisive politics. But here's something I've come to understand. When faced with bad ideas, it's not enough to just defend. If we want to save this country, then it's time to go on offense. Conservative principles are ideas that work, individual responsibility, strong local communities, and belief in the American dream. As a former college professor and current president of the Heritage Foundation, my life's mission is to learn, educate, and take action. My podcast, The Kevin Roberts Show, is my opportunity to share that journey with you. I'll be diving into the critical issues that

plague our nation, having deep conversations with high-profile guests, some of whom may surprise you. And I want to ensure freedom for the next generation. Find the Kevin Roberts Show, wherever you get your podcast. My guest today is Emily Jashinsky, culture editor at the Federalist and host of the Federalist Radio, as well as counterpoints on the Breaking Points team. Emily, welcome to the show. Hey, Doug, great to be here. Always good to have a friend of the show back on. Always good to be back on. Exactly. So you are moving over from Hill Rising to the Counterpoint Show, like I mentioned, at the top. Tell us a little bit about that that new program is like and what you're hoping to achieve with it. Yeah, absolutely. We're doing something

really similar to what we did with Rising Fridays, Ryan Grimm and me on Friday, so same day, same two hosts. Keep it consistent. Exactly. But Breaking Points is independent media, and it's obviously run by our friends, Sager and Jetty and Crystal Ball, who are wonderful and are doing something incredibly important and innovative. It doesn't matter if you're left or right. You have to appreciate the importance of building new media institutions that are not beholden to corporate sponsors, that are not beholden to the super niche NPR tote bag audience and have a business model that works and allows them to provide journalism without any corporate benefactors. So that's the plan going forward. And it's going to be the same old Ryan Grimm and Emily Dershinsky coming from the left and the right,

but covering the news of the week through those lenses and allowing the contrast to help us all sort of work through what's right and wrong. Now here at the National Conservative Convention, you gave a really interesting panel on the importance of building sort of a conservative media ecosystem that we can sort of exist in without the influence of the corporate media that is incredibly biased against us. One of the questions I have about that, though, is while we build that infrastructure up,

For lack of a better term, the Normies that think the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are reputable sources of information. Maybe we'll be slightly hesitant to move over into those spaces, but we still need to have them on board. What is your solution to maybe pull in those people or to understand that those people aren't necessarily on the same boat as us? Well, that's one of the cool things about what Sager and Crystal do with breaking points. And I've heard Sager explain it this way before. And this was back when they were at Rising. They were like, this is a new media product that I can show my parents. and because it has the aesthetic feel of older news,

it feels credible and legitimate in the same sense that people are used to. And I think that's an important part going forward is like new media doesn't need to copy the bad stuff of old media. But I think, you know, having formal, serious spaces, I love Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan is not a replacement for the New York Times, obviously. And so the people who are engaged in these efforts to create parallel competitive institutions, you know, I think it actually does go a really long way to putting stuff behind the aesthetics, putting stuff behind the delivery, you know, how many people have, you know, we're recording here like a little inside baseball with professional audio.

There's an audio engineer who's checking the level. That stuff, I think, is really important because you can have the best ideas in the world. and if they're not delivered in a way that's intelligible, you're not going to have a lot of credibility. So I think we're actually really putting a lot of effort into the style and quality of delivery is important. So I guess is that then maybe where a lot of these places are still getting their legitimacy from

is the aesthetic of legitimacy because obviously a CNN and a New York Times like we're talking about don't have that actual credibility behind them. Is it simply just a veneer? Isn't that funny? Because the Russia conspiracy hoax, basically should have been on a blog. Right.

Right. Like it was instead on the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post to the point where they won Pulitzer. Yeah. Yeah. So I do think the aesthetic helps a lot, but also just the fact that it's run by a club that is exclusive and self-serving and they will self-perpetuate. You know, if the New York Times reports something with three anonymous sources,

well, the Washington Post will then report what the New York Times reported, and CNN will cover it on its airwaves. and it's a vicious cycle basically. So disrupting that and having credible people who actually know how to do really good journalism. For instance, on the panel that I was on, Christina Pasha, who works for the DeSantis campaign, was talking about the efforts that they've made to have events where only fair journalists are allowed. I don't want a world where those fair journalists who want to do a good job and are fair-minded don't know how to do the basics of reporting. And, you know, like a little plug, like that's what we do at the National Journalism Center in NAF is equipping, you know, conservative-minded journalists with the ability to say, I'm going to go into this event hosted by a politician.

Even if I like the politician, I'm going to cover it as if I don't, right? And that's important. And I do, I mean, I worry about that a little bit just because new institutions, you know, don't have the muscle memory. But I mean, that's a great future where the old guard is totally disrupted. Right. Well, I mean, one of the things that kind of brings up is critics of this idea that we'll just build up another conservative ecosystem. You see that then the reality would be there is a conservative media space and a liberal media space and then you either are one or the other and now we have two different realities. How does that sort of play out in a country as one, big as ours and two, as integrated as ours where there's people who might watch Fox News in New York and people who might watch CNN in Texas? Yeah, I think there's still a space if we're talking about media in particular for wire reports, which is like interesting, and this is kind of inside baseball, anything you read from the AP or Reuters, for the most part, they're wires. They're supposed to just be, you know, Ron DeSantis said this here at this time, for example, and very dry and as neutral as as as humanly possible. Neutrality is not possible, but as neutral as as is humanly possible.

I think there's a market for that, and I think somebody is going to figure that. I don't know who it's going to be. But there is a real business opportunity for monoculture, whether it's Top Gun, as we discussed on our panel, whether it's top gun, whether it's genuinely very good pop music, whether it's genuinely neutral reporting. There's a market for it, and as soon as somebody figures out and figures out how to do it, great.

But for now, the business models, and I think into the future, are going to prize these niche audiences, You know, whether it's, you know, Stephen Colbert could never be Johnny Carson. Right. But Stephen Colbert can be very successful by making resistance boomers tune in every single night. Right. And so it's the same thing you see on the right. And it's not entirely bad because you're getting better information.

You know, the Federalists, we're in new media. We have a conservative audience. And that's great. We love that. But, you know, there will be an audience as well for, I think, neutral stuff, too, going forward. and to the extent that's possible, I think someone's going to figure out how to monetize it. Well, fingers crossed, because one of the things that sort of brings up to me is AP and Reuters that are supposed to exist as these independent sort of like blaze wire services,

we actually at the Daily Signal had an issue with Reuters where they misrepresented some of our reporting. So some of these traditional wire services aren't doing that. Is there a reason why that seems to have shifted? Yeah, it's why we assign our students at NJC, what I call the most important book about journalism, that has nothing to do with journalism. It's coming apart by Charles Murray because the reason is that these cultural differences and elite sorting, so into literal super zips,

like you can do this down to a zip code. People tend to be higher education, higher income, but that more than ever before in our history means they also have different cultural tastes. And this is because of the great splintering, right? So like they're going to be watching, you know, modern family, everyone else is watching Blue Bloods, like whatever it is. And these touchstones are really important.

You know, if you don't drive a car, you have a different perspective on gas prices. Right, right. Or you don't have a perspective on gas prices. So, yeah, these things are really, really, really important. And the AP is a great example because they changed their style guide years ago to be sure that preferred pronouns were respected in AP style. And that goes to every single newsroom that copies or follows AP Style Guide. And they made that decision right away, and that went a very long way towards normalizing this poisonous and harmful ideology.

And so it's because they all tend to have gone through the same colleges. They live in the same places. They socialize with the same people. They watch the same shows. They have the same background, so they think the same way. And it's not reflective or representative of the rest of the country. And it's now totally shielded and walled off from criticism because they've neutralized their critics as big. So it just metastasizes into something very bad.

Well, as, you know, the rise of independent media starts to become more apparent and trust in mainstream institutions like a CNN MSNBC start to drop, we've started to see a response. So CNN recently began to fire some of its pretty biased pundits like everyone's favorite, you know, newsman, Brian Stelter. His initials are BS. I mean, yeah. I just realized that. It's perfect.

That's genius. Yeah, all right. But they did that, and they basically said that we're going to try and hugh more to the center. Do you see that as being, one, honest, or do you see it being as particularly effective? This is sort of similar to a question you asked me earlier, which I think is a very fair challenge. Is it possible? Because I do think Chris Licked, who's the new top guy at CNN, understands that monoculture is very easy to monetize if you can do it, that there's this appetite for neutral or perceived neutral reporting as neutral as possible from war zones.

and what people used to associate with CNN. Sure, sure. He knows that that's good business. He has spoken out against Twitter. He's been pretty out in the open about his disdain for especially the place that CNN was taken to during the Trump administration. So the question then is, is it possible? I don't think at an old institution like CNN, it is possible because it's staffed with a bunch of millennials and Gen Z who have been conditioned to see anybody who may be very very, voted for Trump as necessarily bigoted.

Like this is something, it's an argument that was made on these airwaves, right? That like, on CNN's airwaves that you are a racist. If you voted for Donald Trump, it doesn't matter if you're black or white or Hispanic, you are a racist. Right, right. You're perpetuating a racist system. So when you have people who believe that in your newsroom, can you ever come to a place of respect that allows you to include a fair perspective of the other side?

Probably not. Right. But I think somebody else, you know, that it's not in charge of this massive corporate behemoth. We'll figure it out. I think we'll see CNN try. I just don't have a lot of confidence that they can fully get there. If they're still letting Don Lemon slide as an anchor, I think they're going to have a tough time. Yeah, I mean, your colleagues on Breaking Point Sager and Crystal had a conversation about this very recently where they said the second the Trump kind of comes back into the scene.

It seems like he's probably preparing for a 20-24 run. this all kind of goes away because the monetization of having nonstop coverage of this man will just be so severe. Do we see that also being reflected on the other side where it becomes very obvious that AOC is just a perfect target. We're just going to keep harping on AOC. How does that affect the conservative side of the news argument? It's an interesting question because in my experience in conservative media, it kind of looks more like the future of media than old media does in that it's not beholden to, well, maybe this is too optimistic,

but it's not super beholden, in my experience, to clicks, which is very, very good. At least there are conservative media outlets that aren't obsessed with trafficking clicks, and their business model is not predicated on traffic and clicks. There are some that, of course, are. But I think having those institutions is really important, and building those is really important.

Of course, I mean, Trump is like, Trump and AOC, it doesn't matter. Right. People are going to click on that stuff. So I do think that's true, but I also think conservative media is now more and more aware. And it has more viewers and listeners from the left and from the center who cannot stomach anything else. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That it's very aware that these are serious times and they demand seriousness.

So I think it's a new, actually a new era for conservative media. And I haven't really thought of that before until we were having this conversation. But I do think that's true. I guess as a one final point, your show, as you've mentioned, is very specifically formatted, where it's you, a conservative, talking with a, I mean, Ryan Grove is a socialist. I think he's self-expressed that he is a socialist. Sager is a national conservative, a populist, and Crystal Ball is not. Obviously, she's from the left.

Do we see that as maybe being more what Americans are talking about? Because it makes me think about like Crossfire back in the day where you had Tucker Carlson, but that didn't work. I mean, it went away. So why are we now returning to that? And is that sort of the future? So I think what we do is very different from what Crossfire did, but I also don't think Crossfire was a bad thing.

There's this really conventional wisdom is that John Stewart just destroyed Crossfire and destroyed Tucker Carlson to his face in like 2003 or whenever that happened on CNN where he told them that Crossfire is destroying the country. And it was like Tucker and Paul Bagala, I think. And you guys are just destroying everyone. and Crossfire were shortly canceled after that. But I've always thought Ben Zomynich makes a really good point about this, that Crossfire in the public arena was essential because it showed a place

where you could have people who were willing to sit down next to each other, be in a green room together and have a discussion from both sides of the aisle on a daily basis. In the public, there's a catharsis to seeing that in public, to seeing that in the news and on a major corporate platform. platform at the same time, I think what we do at counterpoints and what breaking points has been doing since it launched, it's just a more interesting contrast right now because of the realignment in politics to pit basically the populist left and right against each other because, you know, I don't think that's where most of the country is. Right, right. But I do think most of the country is probably, you know, with me on immigration and with Ryan on health care and with, you know, meet with me maybe on, and Ryan and are both on the same page when it comes to me. for the most part. So there's really good agreement and really good differences. And I think that's

something that moves the ball forward. Like today in my remarks, I cited Marx. You know, and Mark's talking about the corporate machine or industrialization basically erasing sex differences and age differences and nationality differences. Broken clock is right twice a day. Yes, that's right. But, you know, I think when you come to it with the perspective that we're in very extraordinary times, and you're not just trying to make a quick buck. Sure. And, you know, that is very important. And it's something that you can really not do on cable news anymore.

I guess, actually, this just occurred to me while you were talking. What is to say that independent media does not become the very creature that it's set out to destroy? There's nothing to say that. Nothing at all. Although, I think the business model is a lot more promising, where you're not reliant on these massive corporate overlords. So even being able to get on the cable guide, right?

Being able to get in the cable lineup and then depending on your ability to stay on the cable lineup. And then being in these really bitter ratings war with new media, people can really make sure that they're continuing to, they are held to account by their readers directly. Which is a good thing if you're a sort of new media outlet. That's a good thing to be held to account. And I'd rather be held account that way than by traffic. Sure. Or by ratings. So, you know, I do think the business model is very, very promising,

but, you know, there's no guarantee where any of this goes. Sure. I don't know what's going to happen next year. Like, we could all be gone, Doug. Well, if the climate change folks are to be believed, we only have, what, like five years left, 10 years left? Five minutes. Five minutes.

We're all going to burn up. Anyway, that was Emily Jishinsky, culture editor at the Federalist, host of the Federalist Radio Hour, and new host on CounterPoint with the Breaking Points Network. Thank you so much, Emily, for your time. Always happy to have you on. Thanks so much, Doug.

And that'll do it for this episode of The Daily Signal podcast. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing what the future of media holds. I think that legacy outlook like CNN and MSNBC cannot die fast enough, and I'm very excited to see what takes their place. That's going to do it for today's episode of the Daily Signal podcast.

As always, if you want to, you can subscribe on your podcast listening app of choice on Spotify, Google Play, Apple Podcasts, you name it, we're probably there. And also, if you can, please leave a five-star rating and a review. It really does help us out, get that word to other people. So if you could share it and give it to your friends and family, that would be wonderful as well. Now, Daily Signal listeners, I actually have some very disappointing news for you. This will be the last official interview I give with the Daily Signal. I've been with the Daily Signal for about a year and a half, two years now, and it has been one of the most phenomenal.

nominal times of my life. It's been a joy and a pleasure to join you guys on your commute to home, on your commute to work, wherever you listen to the podcast. And it's going to be a real bummer to not be able to share these stories with you anymore. However, if you are interested, you can always check me out. I have new projects coming up and I'm very excited for you to see. So keep in touch and keep on listening to the Daily Signal podcast. It's going to be a blast. All right. Sign it off for the last time. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. The executive producers are Rob Blewey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen,

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