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- [00:01]
Ben Bradford
This message comes from Carvana, who makes buying and financing your next car easy. Thousands of vehicles, terms up front and 100% online. Even get it delivered to your door. Buy your car the easy way with Carvana. Delivery fee may apply.
- [00:18]
Narrator
Courtney Budd had a conversation last year that left her shaking. It was with a family member and it was about politics.
- [00:25]
Ben Bradford
He made the comment, trump is a good man. I just on such a. Such a basic, fundamental level, just couldn't see any reason in that statement.
- [00:36]
Narrator
It'd be an understatement to say that Courtney does not agree with this, but what upset her was who was saying it.
- [00:44]
Ben Bradford
Somebody whom I not only love, but really respect for his intelligence and also his ethics and his moral compass.
- [00:53]
Narrator
It felt like they weren't just disagreeing, but living in separate realities. Ron McFarland has been looking for common ground with his sister. He thinks she's misinformed.
- [01:05]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
You know, she gets a lot of things from social media and things of that nature.
- [01:09]
Narrator
Ron is a Trump voter. His news sources include Fox and podcaster Joe Rogan.
- [01:15]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
I kind of like him, he says.
- [01:17]
Narrator
He tries to watch CNN and other sources. But ultimately, Ron thinks most news intentionally misleads.
- [01:24]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
Where is the truth? I'm always trying to search for the truth.
- [01:30]
Narrator
It used to be, even just a few decades ago, that Americans largely used and trusted the same news sources. Now the way we get basic facts about the world is polarized. We are increasingly split into separate bubbles, absorbing different information that paints conflicting pictures of the same events in that environment. How can we govern together? How can we reach the consensus that democracy requires? How can there be any common ground now? Our two media ecosystems are not the same, equal from opposite political sides. And we can see this because, well, we're all subject to psychological forces that polarize us. And we're going to explore those. Only in one of these media bubbles do a huge portion of voters consistently believe a presidential election was stolen. That is where the fraud took place, where they were flipping votes. Only one of them has led Americans to reject basic health interventions. Covid vaccines need to be withdrawn from the market. Now only one has left its audience with the impression that climate change is not real. Violent crime is spiking and a host of outlandish conspiracy theories. Migrants are grilling pets in America. That is true. It seems to me that this is a root problem in American politics, yet often overlooked because it feels so intractable. We have information bubbles, and one of them leaves Americans inside it, consistently misled about important, fundamental, provable facts. I started this podcast Landslide to trace our political divide, where it comes from, how it developed. And I keep coming back to the same point. Nothing is more urgent than our information divide. From Nuanced Tales. In partnership with wfae, distributed by the NPR network, this is is a new miniseries from Landslide, Engines of Outrage. Over the course of the next four episodes, I'll have conversations with experts to explore where today's news environment came from. We'll trace how the right wing bubble grew from small insurgency during the events of Landslide's first season to a full competitor against mainstream news. We'll look at how technology and psychology amplified it and our division affecting all of our information diets. This will not be a comprehensive history, more of an autopsy. The goal is to understand what happened, to figure out what, if anything, can bring us back to a more collective fact based understanding of reality. We start by going back to a time when it seemed like the nation did have that. In the 1960s and 70s. When it came to most news, there was really only one game in town.
- [04:18]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
Direct from our newsroom in New York, this is the CBS Evening News with Wall Walter Cronko. This is NBC nightly news, Thursday, October 30, with John Chancellor reporting.
- [04:28]
Narrator
A huge portion of the country of all political stripes sat down each night in front of their TVs and watched the same thing.
- [04:35]
Andy Tucker
It was something like three quarters of everybody who had a television on at 6:30 was watching one of the three networks and there were only three. So they were watching ABC, CBS or NBC.
- [04:45]
Narrator
Andy Tucker is a media historian at the Columbia Journalism School.
- [04:49]
Andy Tucker
They were very establishment. They were white guys in jackets with silver hair.
- [04:53]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
Good evening. Prince Juan Carlos de Bourbon y Bourbon is the new chief of state in Spain.
- [04:59]
Andy Tucker
But it was, it was, you know, people, people watched it. People tended to trust it. People tended to find them familiar because they came into your house while you were eating your meatloaf and that's the way it is.
- [05:10]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
Wednesday, July 31, 1968.
- [05:13]
Andy Tucker
There is no, no publication, no organization, no news source now that would have the same kind of reach as those three put together.
- [05:21]
Narrator
In one 1969 survey, nine out of 10Americans said they regularly watched the television news.
- [05:28]
Andy Tucker
It was not the vast variety of sources that we now have. There was a sense, probably exaggerated, but a sense that people were kind of reading and knowing the same things.
- [05:42]
Narrator
What changed that or who? Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew had transformed almost overnight in 1968 from near unknown to Richard Nixon's vice presidential pick and his attack dog. As vp, Agnew was The man Nixon sent to flay administration critics in colorful, alliterative style. If you've ever heard the nattering nabobs of negativism, that was him. And about a year after he and Nixon were elected, Agnew appeared for a speech in Des Moines that his office billed as a major address.
- [06:19]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
I have a subject I think is of great interest to the American people. Tonight I want to discuss the importance of the television medium to the American people.
- [06:29]
Narrator
Agnew focused this night's ire on a surprise subject. The producers of television news.
- [06:35]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
This little group of men who not only enjoy a rite of instant rebuttal to every presidential address, but more importantly, wield a free hand in selecting, presenting and interpreting the great issues in our nation.
- [06:50]
Narrator
He essentially said they were enacting their own liberal partisan agenda.
- [06:54]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
A narrow and distorted picture of America often emerges from the televised news.
- [07:01]
Narrator
The speech was cynical. The famously touchy Nixon and his advisors were furious at recent critical coverage of the Vietnam War. Agnew and Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan had worked up this address to fire back. It touched a nerve. While polls showed most Americans trusted the news, the accusation of bias had circulated on the right and left. Black newspapers sprang up in the 40s and 50s in response to a media establishment that was overwhelmingly white. In the battle for civil rights, segregationists such as George Wallace routinely complained they were being treated unfairly by the media.
- [07:37]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
They try to make it appear that we are bigots, that we are prejudiced, that we are biased, that we are immoral.
- [07:43]
Narrator
Agnew knew this, and in his speech he was echoing complaints of Wallace and others. But now it was coming from the Vice President of the United States. Are you saying that the Nixon administration is sort of the first time, at least in modern history, that we see the President, the White House, accusing the media of having a liberal bias in the modern era?
- [08:05]
Andy Tucker
Yeah, I think so. I think so.
- [08:07]
Narrator
Media historians, including Andy Tucker, point to Agnew's speech as a turning point. It gained wider play. Reporters picked up the story. It was their job. And Agnew and other Nixon allies continued over the next days and months to hammer this accusation of slanted.
- [08:24]
Andy Tucker
The Nixon administration was, well, setting up the press as an enemy. It was a very vigorous spin operation that had the line of the day that worked very closely with journalists, but also used the power of the White House to smear the press.
- [08:39]
Narrator
And it coincided with polls showing trust in mainstream news in our shared reality beginning to fall. Before we go further, it's worth discussing Agnew's charge Was the news biased? The answer is, of course right. Humans are subjective creatures, and choosing what stories to cover, who to talk to, requires subjective judgment, even describing what things look like. Was a crowd large or small, rowdy or muted? Is subjective. And Agnew was clearly right that a tiny fraction of men living in the same large cities decided what of all the world's events most people would see. Andy Tucker says it led to blind spots.
- [09:24]
Andy Tucker
It did seem to confirm and valorize the idea of a dominant culture. The visible faces of that culture were middle aged white men. There were certain advantages to this sense that we all know the same stuff, but it also confirmed the establishment as the important institution, cultural institution.
- [09:44]
Narrator
It is funny, I spent a lot of time, just hundreds, if not, I don't know, thousands of hours digging through archives of old evening news broadcasts and you look at the rundowns of their programs. On any given day, they are 90% identical.
- [10:04]
Andy Tucker
Yeah, the herd instinct is very, very strong in that kind of coverage.
- [10:08]
Narrator
So there were biases, but Tucker says that's different from saying these journalists were enacting an agenda.
- [10:16]
Andy Tucker
Yeah, I want to first acknowledge, of course, that serious, responsible newsrooms do make mistakes. They get things wrong. They don't see what they're supposed to see. But there is a process that is rooted in fact finding, doing your best to challenge your own assumptions so that you report against yourself.
- [10:35]
Narrator
In the wake of Agnew's speech and increasing distrust in media, other sources with a very different intent would gain influence.
- [10:48]
Ben Bradford
Support for NPR and the following message come from Warby Parker, the One Stop Shop for all your vision needs. They offer expertly crafted prescription eyewear plus contacts, eye exams and more. For everything you need to see, visit your nearest Warby Parker store or head to warbyparker.com There is a long history of misinformation about autism, from accusations about bad parenting to RFK Jr. S false allegations that Tylenol has something to do with it. But science is getting closer to truly understanding what drives autism.
- [11:20]
Narrator
It looks like there are hundreds of genes that are involved.
- [11:24]
Ben Bradford
To find out what the research actually says about autism and what we still don't know, listen to Short Wave in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [11:32]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
It is hard to get a house. Getting that down payment together. Brutal. You shipped off to Djibouti to afford a down payment for a house?
- [11:41]
A.J. Bauer
Yes sir, 100% on planet money.
- [11:43]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
The high price of housing.
- [11:45]
A.J. Bauer
What the Trump administration is trying to.
- [11:47]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
Do about it and will it work?
- [11:49]
A.J. Bauer
Listen on the NPR app or Wherever.
- [11:51]
Narrator
You get your podcasts, do you ever.
- [11:53]
Ben Bradford
Feel like no matter how many hours of sleep you got, you're still fatigued?
- [11:57]
A.J. Bauer
We have to be able to differentiate.
- [11:59]
Ben Bradford
Sleep from the different ways that we can rest on the Life Kit podcast. The seven types of rest and why each one is important to living a full, healthy life. Listen to the Life Kit podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [12:21]
Narrator
Outside Washington, D.C. in a nondescript office building, behind a locked door guarded by multiple security measures, printers buzzed. You heard about this in detail. In Landslide's first season, they spat out millions and millions of letters to households around the nation. The direct mail operation of the political activist group Richard Viggory.
- [12:42]
Andy Tucker
Richard Viggory, conservative ideologue, direct male genius.
- [12:46]
Narrator
You heard how Vigory and his allies in the New Right identified voters upset about a variety of separate cultural issues, textbooks, gun rights, abortion, and linked those causes together in fiery letters to an ever expanding list. And you heard from a Reagan strategist, just briefly how this was a new form of media.
- [13:06]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
You know, now conservatives have talk radio, they have cable news things and all that. There wasn't anything like that back then. The only communications channel that you had directly to conservatives was mail.
- [13:22]
Narrator
Vigory's direct mail operation bloomed in the years immediately following Vice President Spiro Agnew's accusation of network news bias.
- [13:30]
A.J. Bauer
The idea that the mainstream media is biased against you and that you need to trust alternative media sources. That was something that Vigori didn't create, but he certainly like really enhances in the 1970s.
- [13:42]
Narrator
AJ Bauer is a professor at the University of Alabama who studies the rise of right wing media.
- [13:48]
A.J. Bauer
By creating a kind of alternative ecosystem of conservative newsletters. There was not just claims that the media was biased, but also an alternative source that you could get to see exactly where the news media wasn't covering specific issues or was covering them in a flawed way of some sort.
- [14:03]
Narrator
Here's what they're not telling you.
- [14:04]
A.J. Bauer
Here's what they're not telling you. Exactly. It's one thing to say they're biased, it's another thing to say they're biased. And here's the thing that they're, that they're missing.
- [14:10]
Narrator
This medium told you the mainstream news was lying and the truth was here. But that truth was apocalyptic, laden with conspiracy theories. The newsletters of the New Right from Vickery's printers warned that textbooks were teaching cannibalism, gay people were recruiting children. The Secretary of State was perhaps sacrificing anti communists in Vietnam. You know, Vigory wrote of later on of his strategy that political inertia is the normal state for most people, and it takes a sledgehammer of an issue to distract them from their ball games, shopping sprees, and daily work preoccupations. The tactics of reporting how that information hits the page and the intent of it is sort of fundamentally different.
- [14:57]
A.J. Bauer
Yeah, from the beginning, it's always been an ideological project. It hasn't been kind of like a let's create a conservative counter news product. It was, how do we create media that disrupts the kind of mainstream hegemony of the traditional press?
- [15:14]
Narrator
The newsletters provided information. That information could be true, but it wasn't the point of it. Vigory wasn't doing journalism. The intent was not to inform. It was to inspire political action, to outrage. That's really important because that intent and that style set the template for voices that would soon grow much louder. At the same time as Vigory's letters were proliferating, a right wing movement made other gains in American political life. In 1976, it won control of the.
- [15:51]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
Republican Party platform, the issue of court ordered busing. The subject was the Panama Canal, which in favor of school prayer, amnesty, gun.
- [15:59]
Narrator
Control, national health, and conservative hero Ronald Reagan nearly knocked off the sitting president Gerald Ford for the nomination. Four years later, he won it all. It all lended legitimacy and visibility to a movement that a few years earlier had been easy to dismiss as fringe and movement premised on the idea that the mainstream media was corrupt. Did news organizations internalize some of this Criticism?
- [16:28]
A.J. Bauer
Yeah, absolutely.
- [16:30]
Narrator
A.J. bauer, the historian of right wing media, says reporters began giving more weight to views that had long been dismissible.
- [16:37]
A.J. Bauer
Conservative movement figures increasingly get interviewed right by the New York Times and by other traditional mainstream news outlets as though they're representing a kind of responsible opposition.
- [16:50]
Narrator
Now this is what news is supposed to do, right? Seek and report major sides of a debate. You could also argue that reporters became more credulous, less willing to challenge provably false information, which had bubbled up from, say, fever swamps of New Right newsletters because it came from politically legitimized voices. But Bower says pressure by conservatives led to even more inroads in traditional media within mainstream journalism.
- [17:15]
A.J. Bauer
There's concern that they were losing the trust of the public and they needed to regain it. You see conservatives, you know, wedging into that vulnerability.
- [17:23]
Narrator
The New York Times in the early 1970s hired its first voice from the conservative movement to its opinion pages. But not just any voice. A PR man, a spin doctor, the writer of Some of Agnew's most blisteringly partisan speeches, including his nattering Nabobs line, william Safire came straight from that White House job to become a consistent critic of the times from within its own pages. After Watergate, it was Safire who stuck the suffix gate to other more routine controversies, an effort to suggest that presidents such as Jimmy Carter engaged in a corruption akin to Nixon's. Mainstream outlets made these adjustments concessions to quell criticism, to prove they were fair and to restore public trust. Bower says it had the opposite effect.
- [18:12]
A.J. Bauer
There's an increasing perception that television news is biased and that local news is biased as well.
- [18:18]
Narrator
Instead of relieving criticisms of bias, it lended more credibility to the people making them.
- [18:23]
A.J. Bauer
This is exactly the moment where conservative news, those Richard Viggory newsletters, are starting to flourish.
- [18:30]
Narrator
Trust in traditional news was falling. Newsletters offering a slanted perspective were proliferating, a perspective reinforced by a new crop of right wing politicians and think tanks. And in this climate, Bauer says Americans suddenly got a new they could turn the TV dial somewhere else.
- [18:47]
A.J. Bauer
This is at exactly the moment where people are starting to tune out of watching news because they're having more choices. So let's say you're eating dinner at like 5 o', clock, 6 o', clock, you want to watch TV. Your choice is news, news or news? Basically, yeah, by the early 80s, so 1980 is where cable starts to proliferate. If you've got cable, you don't have to watch one of those big three news channels anymore for dinner, right? You could watch sports or you could watch a movie or something like that.
- [19:16]
Narrator
Suddenly there was espn, mtv. You could watch hockey, although good luck seeing the Puck, or put Nickelodeon on for your kids.
- [19:24]
A.J. Bauer
So people start consuming less news. Actually a lot of times people think about it as like they people switched from mainstream news to some ideological news. But really what ends up happening is most people kind of opt out and they're getting less news than they used to.
- [19:38]
Narrator
The network news that had just a few years earlier reached almost every American showing them the same reality was now easy to tune out. You could unplug from traditional news entirely and just absorb the angry alternate partisan worldview of those pamphlets or their ilk.
- [19:54]
A.J. Bauer
You're consuming less news, but all of a sudden you're getting all these newsletters that are saying, oh, did you hear hear about the Equal Rights Amendment and how bad it is?
- [20:01]
Narrator
The drop in audience for mainstream news left an information void, a void that alternative media could fill. But it didn't, not immediately for Most of the 1980s, right wing media remained relatively niche. Mostly those same products. Newsletters, magazines, local radio. You had to already be somewhat politically engaged to want to tune in. That was about to change with a new polarizing voice that would become the right's first media superstar and the bubble would expand exponentially.
- [20:36]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
Behind the golden EIB microphones, it's the Rush Limbaugh program coming to you live. And direct from the Limbaugh Institute for.
- [20:45]
Narrator
Advanced Conservative Studies, the brash, boisterous radio host Rush Limbaugh had not set out to become a right wing media force. But in the late 1980s, the one time failed DJ struck on a formula for success, and it sounded eerily like a live action vigory newsletter.
- [21:04]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
Moral decay is rooted in the Democratic Party.
- [21:08]
Narrator
Demonizing political opponents, sowing distrust in mainstream media.
- [21:12]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
Whenever they spot what they think is Republican scandal. That's where they go.
- [21:17]
Narrator
There were conspiracy theories.
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Archive Audio / Historical Figures
We have been told a polar ice capsule melt and that when this happens, sea levels will rise. There are so many of these environmental myths, and the reason they exist is because the environmental movement is the new home of the socialist communist movement of the world.
- [21:33]
Narrator
And there was culture war and racial resentment.
- [21:36]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
I thought white men were the new pigs of society. Unless, of course, you want a successful, happy marriage, then by all means get a white boy. That's right. If you want a successful and happy marriage, then by all means get a white boy.
- [21:52]
Narrator
For three hours a day, Limbaugh blasted and lampooned Democrats, feminists, gay people, liberals, journalists, and Republicans he didn't feel were sufficiently conservative. The fact that he could do this so freely was new, a result of the Federal Communications Commission under President Ronald Reagan scrapping its long held Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine had required news programs to seek, quote unquote balance. A year after the end of the Doctrine, Limbaugh's program debuted nationally. And unlike the new rights newsletters and magazines, with Rush, you didn't have to take the time to pick up and pour through materials sent to your home. You could switch him on in your car or your office and just immerse yourself.
- [22:35]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
All right, listen up, folks. A political twister's kicking up across the fruited plain, and you need a conservative compass to point you to the truth.
- [22:42]
Narrator
Limbaugh added one more ingredient to the formula that would define the most powerful right wing media. He again was not a journalist. He wasn't fact checking or looking to provide multiple viewpoints. But he also wasn't an activist, at least at first. From a young age, he just wanted to be on the radio. But he washed out as a DJ at four different stations. So when he finally got this last shot, he wasn't seeking to drive voters. He wanted advertisers.
- [23:11]
A.J. Bauer
He's got more of an entertainer's demeanor. Right. He had worked in radio as kind of a morning zoo crew kind of guy. He understood that in order to captivate broadcast audiences, you couldn't just disseminate information. You had to make them feel as though they were getting something out of it and that that something was entertainment.
- [23:29]
Narrator
A.J. bauer at the University of Alabama, who studies the history of right wing media, says Limbaugh to his target audience was fun. They could listen for hours.
- [23:38]
A.J. Bauer
Primarily kind of a comedy program. Not necessarily that I would laugh at all those jokes today. Right. But when you're listening to it as somebody who is sympathetic, you're, you're laughing.
- [23:49]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
Rush Limbaugh for most admired man in America. During the Vietnam War, I railed against the long haired, maggot, infested dope smoking protesters. Rush Limbaugh, inventor of the term feminazi. Rush Limbaugh, your only choice for most admired man in America.
- [24:06]
A.J. Bauer
There's levity. You, you feel a sense of superiority.
- [24:09]
Narrator
He offered a sense of belonging. One person who found this connection from Limbaugh at a young age was Bauer.
- [24:16]
A.J. Bauer
Yeah, yeah, I, I, so my mom got divorced in the early 1990s and would feel really sentimental listening to music. And so she started listening to Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern while driving the meeting the kids around. And I, as a young kid started listening to Rush Limbaugh was kind of a Limbaugh fanatic in the 90s.
- [24:38]
Narrator
Really. What do you remember from it?
- [24:40]
A.J. Bauer
Well, one thing I remember very distinctly is Limbaugh was very much against Bill Clinton in 1992 election. And I was so connected to the idea that Clinton was this kind of bad man and that conservatism was true and all these sorts of things because of my, you know, daily listening of Rush Limbaugh to the point that I was like, deeply emotionally invested and cried when Clinton won.
- [25:07]
Narrator
Limbaugh promised, however, tongue in cheek, that he was offering you facts, reliable information.
- [25:12]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
Point you to the truth.
- [25:13]
Narrator
You could live ensconced in the reality he presented. And a lot of people did. The Rush Limbaugh Show's audience expanded rapidly from just a few hundred thousand listeners at a given time to millions within five years, 17 million a week. And as politics became more and more central to the radio host's brand, as his influence grew, he tied himself closer and closer to the Republican Party and vice versa. A top GOP congressman, Tom Delay, boasted about the relationship.
- [25:43]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
We fax Rush Limbaugh almost 24 hours a day. Where do you think he gets half of the stuff that he puts on the radio program?
- [25:50]
Narrator
In 1992, Limbaugh openly called for listeners to side with President George Bush.
- [25:54]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
What I really wanted to call about was that I'm really having a hard time with the presidential election. Vote Bush.
- [26:01]
Narrator
Bush invited Limbaugh to the White House, even carried his bags in for him. And while he still lost two years later, Congressional Republicans, led by their new right leader, Newt Gingrich, won control of the house for the first time since the 19. The new class of Republicans celebrated Limbaugh as their guest of honor. Would like to nominate and make Rush.
- [26:24]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
Limbaugh an honorary member of our freshman class because surely he helped us become the majority.
- [26:33]
Narrator
It was an intertwining of a media figure with political figures that would be unthinkable, disqualifying, instantly fireable for a journalist at any mainstream institution. But Limbaugh wasn't a journalist, even as he was at the heart of a rapidly expanding media ecosystem. Radio broadcasters searching for profits, sought out their own Limbaughs. Other popular hosts included Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck. Many stations switched to all conservative talk, all the time. And the radio hosts competing for audience found the most salacious stories and extreme conspiracies brought the highest ratings. They leaned in further. It turned out that what the New Right had done for political gain could be good entertainment. Focusing on outrage, wading into conspiracy theory, villainizing opponents, eroding trust in other media. All that building a sense of us versus them. And it was a self reinforcing cycle because politicians and media figures echoed the same messages. Limbaugh could insinuate that the Clintons covered up a corrupt land deal by murdering a White House Aiden and you could read William Safire in the New York Times, dub it Whitewatergate and the speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, would stoke the theory. You can understand why for a lot of Americans, an evidenceless lie seemed true. And for the people spreading it, there was profit and political gain. So the bubble expanded. New websites on the early Internet like the Drudge Report and Newsmax adopted similar characteristics. It was an alternate information ecosystem with one flaw. Almost all of it was clearly offering opinion, not news, no matter how much you might absorb from it. Limbaugh joked about it now I don't.
- [28:21]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
Take sides in political races, as you well know. That wouldn't be fair, it would compromise my objectivity as a journalist.
- [28:30]
Narrator
And so the final big innovation that Fox News would bring along cementing the bubble was really that word news.
- [28:40]
Ben Bradford
This year on Throughline, NPR's history podcast. For generations, an American quest has shaped the world. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Now, 250 years in, what is that pursuit really about? Join us each Tuesday for an essential new series, America in Pursuit. Pursuit. From Throughline on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. World news is changing by the hour on Sources and methods, NPR's national security podcast. We zoom out to explain shifting alliances, global flashpoints and what's really happening in places like Iran, Venezuela, Greenland. Our reporters on the ground connect the dots to help you understand a world.
- [29:22]
Narrator
Order changing beneath our feet.
- [29:24]
Ben Bradford
Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Sources and methods is NPR's national security podcast. When world news changes by the hour, we help you zoom out to understand shifting alliances, global flashpoints, and what is really happening in places like Iran, Venezuela, Greenland. Our reporters on the ground connect the dots to explain a world order changing beneath our feet. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [29:52]
Narrator
Tell us about Fox News and how it differed from what had come before or what was the intent of that network. What were the characteristics of that network.
- [30:02]
Andy Tucker
The first thing that was different was Roger Ailes.
- [30:05]
Narrator
This is media historian Andy Tucker who you heard at the beginning. She's talking about Fox News founder Roger Ailes.
- [30:10]
Andy Tucker
He was a political animal who came from political consulting and campaigning, had worked for Ronald Reagan, had worked for Mitch McConnell, and now he was the head of a news network.
- [30:21]
Narrator
There's been a lot written and reported about Fox and we're not going to dive into a full history, but I think this is the essential point.
- [30:28]
Andy Tucker
From the beginning, Ailes had a very clear idea that he wanted it to be the voice of the right wing that was not going to acknowledge it was the voice of the right wing so that it would sound like it was the voice of the mainstream.
- [30:40]
Narrator
Fox dressed up as a traditional media outlet engaged in that process of news gathering and self examination, using the language.
- [30:47]
Andy Tucker
Of objective journalism to say that's what we do. The mainstream media are the ones who are biased.
- [30:53]
Narrator
Fox famously for years adopted slogans to that effect, fair and balanced.
- [30:58]
Ben Bradford
And here at Fox News we report, you decide.
- [31:00]
Narrator
And here's Ailes.
- [31:01]
Archive Audio / Historical Figures
The American people is very smart. They know the difference between news, analysis, commentary, opinion, spin and bs. The other news organizations won't tell you the difference. We we will.
- [31:12]
Narrator
This is from a Fox produced special the channel ran about how unbiased it was. From the beginning. Al's clearly stated the mission of Fox News to report all sides of a story, unbiased and unfiltered. But in reality, Fox's most watched programs followed the same tactics you've heard. Fomenting outrage, villainizing political opponents, creating that sense of us versus them. Many of its biggest names were the same people straight from talk radio. Ailes plucked Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Laura Ingraham, among others, providing cover. Fox had a newsroom and it could do good work. That lended legitimacy and made it easier for viewers to stay locked into the bubble 24 hours a day. By the early 2000s, Fox was the most watched cable news channel, and success added to its legitimacy. In 2010, the Obama administration granted Fox a coveted front row seat at White House briefings next to the news networks as though they were engaged in the same business. But they never were. At that point, Fox was just the newest player in an alternate media ecosystem that had developed over decades. It rose to challenge the traditional institutions that had brought news to most Americans. Those institutions had been set up to gather news, and they did it roughly the same way. Read a story in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, it'll usually contain the same facts, and they're constantly hiring each other's reporters. What emerged on the right had a different purpose. Outrage, entertainment, activism. It makes sense why conspiracy theories would flourish in that environment. Their are, of course, partisan sources and manipulative content across the spectrum. The news environment is muddy, but this basic asymmetry was at the heart of a growing schism in how Americans viewed the world. And then suddenly the gap widened. A new technology made outreach exponentially easier and more Prof. Next time on our miniseries, Landslide Engines of outrage. The Internet, social media, and our own psychology send the bubble into overdrive.
- [33:32]
Ben Bradford
My students and I begin to realize.
- [33:33]
Narrator
We'Re not looking at accidental rumors.
- [33:35]
Ben Bradford
We're looking at pervasive disinformation.
- [33:37]
Narrator
It's a constant bombardment in which this audience is being told that they are under attack. If you're a fan of this series and interested in more landslide, let me tell you some good news. Our first season was among the top 25 most listened to new podcasts in 2024, according to one of the biggest industry sources, Pod Track. If these new episodes sustain that level of listenership or grow, it will help us continue to do more. So you can help by doing what you did so well with our first season that I'm so grateful for. Share the series, rate it, tell your friends to listen, and sign up for updates at our mailing list@nuancetails.com Landslide is a production of Nuance Tales. It is created, hosted, written and reported by me, Ben Bradford, edited by Noya Carr. Jsebold is the sound designer and engineer. All of the music is by Matt Bradford. Landslide is produced in partnership with WFAE and distributed by the NPR Network. A thanks to all the staff at both who've made it possible. You can also see a list of key sources for this episode@nuancetales.com thanks so much for listening.
- [35:05]
Ben Bradford
On NPR's Wildcard podcast, Melinda French Gates on seeing her ex husband Bill Gates.
- [35:11]
Andy Tucker
Name in the Epstein Files. For me, it's personally hard whenever those details come up right because brings back.
- [35:19]
Narrator
Memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage.
- [35:23]
Ben Bradford
Watch or listen to that wild card conversation on the NPR app or on YouTube @NPRWildcard. This is Tanya Mosley, co host of Fresh Air. You'll see your favorite actors, directors and comedians on late night TV shows or YouTube, but what you get with Fresh Air is a deep dive. Spend some quality time with people like Billie Eilish Questlove, Ariana Grande, Stephen Colbert and so many more. We ask questions you won't hear asked anywhere else. Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and whyyy.