Episode 2 - The Divided Dial

On the Media

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4.6 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you discovered this series through Apple podcasts, or because you heard that we won a Peabody Award for our work; WELCOME! For our longtime listeners who have heard these episodes before, your weekly dose of On the Media will be available as ever, on Friday afternoon. Enjoy!

Episode 2: From Pulpit to Politics

How did the little-known Salem Media Group come to have an outsized political influence? In this episode we trace the company’s rise to power from its scrappy start in the 1970s to the present day — a growth that paralleled and eventually became inextricable from the growth of the Religious Right. We learn that Salem is tightly networked with right wing political strategists, pollsters, big donors, far right leaders and Republican party mainstays thanks to their involvement with the Council for National Policy — a secretive group of Evangelical and conservative leaders. For decades, the CNP has been working behind the scenes to get a specific, highly influential subset of voters to act. And Salem has been a megaphone for their cause.

The Divided Dial is hosted by journalist and Fulbright Fellow Katie Thornton. Her written articles and audio stories have appeared in The Atlantic, 99% Invisible, The Washington Post, BBC, NPR, WNYC, Minnesota Public Radio, The Guardian, Bloomberg’s CityLab, National Geographic, and others. She is a lifelong radio nerd who got her start in media as a teenager, volunteering and working behind the scenes at radio stations for many years. You can follow her work on Instagram or on her website. The Divided Dial was edited by On the Media's executive producer, Katya Rogers. With production support from Max Balton and fact-checking by Tom Colligan, Sona Avakian, and Graham Hacia. Music and sound design by Jared Paul. Jennifer Munson is our technical director. Art by Michael Brennan. With support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I called up reporter Adam Piori last fall and I happened to catch him just as a storm
0:13.9	was slamming his home state of Connecticut.
0:17.1	I wanted to learn more about Salem and Adam, who has written several lengthy articles about
0:29.0	the company is a good guy to ask.
0:33.4	The way that I found out about Salem was I was looking at major campaign donors to both
0:39.0	Democrats and Republicans.
0:40.8	At the time for George Bush, I kept seeing Salem communications.
0:45.4	This was in 2004 when George W. Bush was running for re-election.
0:49.8	This will be the beginning of a new term to make America a safer place, stronger place,
0:54.8	and better place.
0:57.9	I knew who many of the donors were, the major Republican donors, but I never heard of
1:02.3	Salem so I began poking around to see what Salem was.
1:08.3	What Adam found when he was poking around was that Salem, though not the largest radio
1:13.3	network in the country and lacking the name recognition of Fox News or Breitbart, is
1:18.5	nevertheless a powerhouse political influencer.
1:28.9	I'm Katie Thornton and this is the divided dial, a five-part podcast series from On the
1:34.8	Media about how one side of the political spectrum came to dominate talk radio and how
1:40.8	one company is using the airwaves to launch a right-wing media empire.
1:47.3	In this episode, we're going to dig into Salem's 50 year back story from their scrappy
1:52.7	start to where they are today.
1:55.3	It's a history that paralleled the growth of the national religious right and led to
1:59.9	the company's long-standing involvement in a secretive group of powerful evangelical
	...

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