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 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.

This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Kellick.

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,

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

...