WTH Happened to an Objective News Media? Ari Fleischer on His New Book, Suppression, Deception, Snobbery, and Bias: Why the Press Gets So Much Wrong

What the Hell Is Going On

AEI Podcasts

News, History, Government, Politics

4.4 • 633 Ratings

🗓️ 27 July 2022

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Just 7% of Americans today report having a great deal of trust in the media. A majority of the public believes that the media is more concerned with supporting an ideological or political position than informing them. The press is free, but bias has seeped into every corner. And the lack of an objective press threatens American democracy, degrades the national conversation and pits Americans against each other. How did we get to the point where the White House Press Corps has a ratio of 12:1 Democrat to Republican among reporters? Where a swath of this country’s journalists no longer believe they have an obligation to cover both sides of a story? Where the same reporters that cover statistics of a growing partisan and ideological divide in America are the same sources pushing a divisive agenda?

Ari Fleischer joins us today to offer a fresh perspective on the state of our media. He was the White House Press Secretary to George W. Bush and is a veteran media observer. He's a Fox News commentator, and he has a new book out titled, Suppression, Deception, Snobbery, and Bias: Why the Press Gets So Much Wrong ― And Just Doesn't Care.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute.
0:03.0	If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell he's talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on?
0:01.1	Who in God's name knows what
0:22.4	it's all about. I am Daniel Tucker. And'm Mark Thiessen. Welcome to our podcast.
0:39.3	What the hell is going on?
0:41.3	Mark, what the hell is actually going on now?
0:45.3	Well, what's going on, Danny, is we all know that public support for the media,
0:50.3	our trust in the media has collapsed in recent years,
0:53.3	but we didn't know how far it had
0:55.8	fallen until the new Gallup survey of U.S. trust and institutions came out recently, and it shows
1:03.3	that newspapers and TV news have hit a new low. Newspapers have the trust of just 15% of the
1:10.3	American people that's down from 21% the year before.
1:13.4	TV news, 11% of the American people second only to Congress in how much people distrust them.
1:21.3	And they are only four points away from dying Congress as the least trusted institution in the entire United States
1:30.3	of America, Danny. You know, this is a tragedy for American democracy. We need a credible,
1:36.6	objective news media that is trusted broadly by people of all political stripes. And we don't
1:43.6	have it anymore. It's gone.
1:45.2	It's actually funny what you say, because, well, funny is the wrong word, but last week we saw
1:51.6	Prince Harry, who I don't know about you, Mark, but when I think about what I want to think
1:58.0	about American democracy and the American way of life,
2:02.3	I turned to the British Royal Family.
2:04.4	And anyway, that poor sorry moron, Prince Harry went on and on at the United Nations
	...

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