Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDRLST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Roger Reim, President of the Fund
for American Studies, an educational nonprofit that is developing courageous
leaders inspired and equipped to protect and advance the ideas
of individual liberty, personal responsibility, and economic freedom in their
communities and throughout the world. That is right up our
alley here at the Federalist Radio Hour. Roger, thanks so
much for joining us.
Speaker 2: It's a pleasure to be with the Federalists the Radio Hour.
Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 1: Absolutely this is I can't imagine a more important time
in the history of this country than right now to
develop courageous leaders. We seemed to have a short supply
of them. Roger, Well, I agree with you one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: It takes courage today not only to be a conservative,
but to voice your opinion on campus you might get canceled.
So a lot of young people who support limited government
and economic freedom are sometimes intimidated because the environment they're
in on campus. We've seen a lot of harassment of
speakers and attacks on conservatives. So we try to impress
on students the need to have courage in all that
they do and to be willing to speak out and
express their views.
Speaker 1: Is it getting any better on that front in our
college campus?
Speaker 3: Is?
Speaker 1: It seems to me it is, And I think over
the last year, in particular in the run up to
the twenty twenty four election, I am seeing young people
standing up and proudly stating where they stand, getting in
the mix and these college campuses. Are you seeing that
as well? I am encouraged. Yes, we see that.
Speaker 2: You know, with the students who come to our programs,
I think they're concerned about the future, a little more
serious minded about finding opportunities for themselves in their careers.
And also there's a willingness I think both with students
on the right in the middle certainly who are even
maybe not quite as politically interested, to want to listen
to people who may not agree with them. They're more
willing to consider viewpoints that they might not have heard before,
and that's something we encourage. We want to have an
environment that's infused with civility and students can exchange ideas
without personal attacks, without being canceled. And I think on campus,
certainly now there's less tolerance for the kind of anti
Semitic demonstrations we saw on so many campuses, particularly in
the elite universities, the Ivy League universities. And you know,
I've read the stories that no doubt you've read that
students can be a little more open about expressing their
support for President Trump in the past few months. So
that's encouraging that the environment is a little more, a
little less hostile, I think too, kind of diversity that
we want to see in opinions.
Speaker 1: Now here we are in the thick of the battle.
Once again, Please stop me if you've seen this movie before,
I think we all have. Once again, we see the
so called resistance movement coming from the left and certainly
fired up on our college campuses, and it is and
has been for a long time, embedded in corporate media.
You're at an interesting piece on all of this for
a national review recently. I want to open with your
opening line because I think this drives home the point
too often over the past decade, news outlets have seen
themselves as crusaders against the Trump administration and for activist
government in general. That may now be changing. It's an
interesting perspective you go down to talk about how you
know there are some many crusaders left trying struggling for relevance,
but you do believe that that is is changing for
one big reason, as you note.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do think it's changing. You know, it's going
to take a while for the legacy media to implement
the kind of changes I hope to see. But at
least we've seen some. You know, we saw three prominent
or legacy media newspapers, the Washington Post, the LA Times,
and USA Today that decided not to endorse a candidate
last fall, and you know it led to an uprising
in there in the newsrooms, at least at the Washington
Post and the New York Times. Yeah, at the LA
Times when they did that, but I think when Jeff Bezos,
who owns the Washington Post, announced recently that their new
motto would be personal liberty and free markets. You know,
their opinion at are resigned, some of the reporters have resigned,
but that's an encouraging sign that they're going to be
moved a little more toward supporting I think, less government
involvement in our lives.
Speaker 1: That was a remarkable moment, the Bezos moment, obviously because
of what that newspaper has been, what it has represented
under the direction, of course of this billionaire. One might
even Roger describe him as an oligarch, as Bernie Sanders
goes about on his tour describing wealthy conservatives or those
who align with Donald Trump or allies of Donald Trump,
they're oligarch's. That of course, the left doesn't like to
look at their oligarchs, the George Soroses of the world.
But again back to Bezos, in what he saw at
the time, it wasn't all motivated. I don't think by
an epiphany to Jeff Bezos that, you know, maybe we
haven't been as fair as we should. There's a business
model here, isn't there. I mean, at the end of
the day, this is about dollar signs more than anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't want to speculate too much about his motive,
of course, But you're right. The business model for the
news media has been changing over a number of years.
You know, they used to rely on advertising dollars and
those dried up with the rise of the Internet and
digital social media that's capturing a lot of the advertising dollars.
So the New York Times, the Washing Post, major newspapers
needed a new model, and the Post was really rescued
by Jeff Bezos. Those reporters there should be grateful he
bought their paper and they kept their jobs for ten years.
But you know, I think that's part of the reason
why a publication like the New York Times and the
Washington Post, those two in particular, tended to be kind
of a house organ for the progressive left because that
was their subscriber base in the New York City area,
in the Washington s area, which the government is a
company town and the company's the government, and so they
had to appeal to their audiences there. But they certainly
went overboard and they stopped reporting. In my opinion, they
stopped reporting the news. Honestly, the news sections of those
papers became advocacy and pushed an agenda. In many cases,
they found themselves reporting things that weren't true, or refusing
to report on things that were true. Note the Russian
collusion story that turned out to not be true, in
the Biden laptop that they wouldn't report on that was true.
So there's been a pushback against that, and it's good
to see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, quickly to your point, I think the sin of
omission as I have been in the realm of journalism
for longer than I want to acknowledge right now, but
I have seen, you know, the seismic shifts in journalism
and the digital age. You know, I remember some newsrooms
with typewriters to date myself, but you know, we've seen
a lot of change. And as you mentioned, the reporters
at the Washington Post in many ways should have been
grateful that somebody was buying that news organization, but many
of them were not. In fact, many of the reporters
and the editors were very hostile to bes new position
where he wanted to take the newspaper. As you mentioned,
part of this, a big part of this is the
institutions of higher education in America in doctrinating these young
new journalists, the new era journalists. Is that changing at all,
because until that changes. I think we're walking down many
of the same roads, even though you have publishers and
owners of newspapers saying, wait a minute, let's stop doing
what we've been doing. It's costing us a lot of money,
and we're losing the respect of a lot of Americans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, in twenty twenty one, not that many
years ago, I recall a series of stories that came
out one after the other. It was Lester Holt, who
was the NBC News anchor, made a.
Speaker 1: Speech emphasis emphasis on was right, Roger, because as you
note in your piece, he's one of several of the
big players for a long time who've gotten out of
the industry.
Speaker 2: That's right, and he shifted his role at least, But
he said, I think it's in his speech. He said,
I think it's become clear that fairness is overrated. The
idea that we should give two sides equal weight and
merit doesn't reflect the world we find ourselves in. And
he he said, you know, we don't need to hear
both sides. And this from the anchor of a major
network newscast on NBC, where he was arguing for putting
a thumb on the scale when they make reporting, and
we saw a prominent professor, longtime professor at the Stanford
in the Stanford Journalism program, similarly said something like that.
And you know, I know from talking to graduates of
major journalism schools in this country that you know, the
economics textbooks, if they even take any economics, it's Marxist economics.
One friend of mine who went to Columbia Graduate School
of Journalism said he took finally got so fed up
with bias in his classes. He took a course on
writing restaurant reviews, and he said even in that course
it was biased. It was how to write about restaurants
and food from a left wing perspective with.
Speaker 1: A little taste of equity, diversity, and inclusion involved. Right, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right. So you know, it's too early for
me to know if the journalism schools will change. I
think they've got to if they want to produce graduates
they can get hired, because if we see the changes
that I think are coming, that it's really encouraging. You
know that the White House has decided to open up
the newsroom to a more diverse press corps. I talked
recently with the press spokesman for George W. Bush Ari Fleischer,
and he said when he was in that role in
two thousand and one, two thousand and two in the
White House, he had someone on his staff checked the
voter registrations of the members of the White House Press
Corps who had credentials and it was twelve to one Democrat.
And he said he was very encouraged what President Trump's
doing because he said, why should the president only get
questions from a hostile media? You know, Kenny's have some
reporters in there that are at least willing to ask
a reasonable question that doesn't come from a biased position. Yeah,
and so I think we'll see that with the changes
that are taking place in the press corps, not only
at the White House, but at the Pentagon and elsewhere.
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Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting. Yeah, absolutely, there are many many other
reporters out there, and some you know, with a clear
and they don't hide it a conservative perspective, the Federalist
being one of them. But these are the same news
organizations unlike the ones we've been talking about in the
so called mainstream what I like to call in many
cases the accomplice media. They totally took for gospel, or
took as gospel the word of you know, the administration,
the Biden administration, what has been coined as the deep state.
You know, fifty one so called intelligence professionals on Hunter
Biden's laptop. That's a disgrace to the business of journalism.
And just to point back to what you were talking
about with Lester Holt, Lester stole that philosophy of not
no longer asking both sides their thoughts, their perspective on
the question. That doesn't matter anymore. That we should be
more activist in our journalism, he still let from Aaron
Sorkin in a show called The Newsroom starring Jeff Daniels
years before he said that, And I'm not kidding you.
I feel like I remember watching that show at the
time back in I don't know when it was twenty twelve, thirteen,
And then thinking back over the years, Oh my god,
Aaron Sorkin wrote the blueprint for the mess that we
are in now. Do you do you see that connection
going on? Hollywood style journalism, activism, leftist journalism as opposed
to what was traditionally the objective field, or more so
the objective field of journalism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and that's an interesting point. I'm old
enough to remember how Watergate changed journalism. You know, kids
coming out of journalism schools in the seventies wanted to
be like Woodward and Bernstein. Yeah, and you know, they
were searching for stories. They wanted to be investigative journalism journalists,
but they were doing it with a perspective, with a
to make a name for themselves, a reputation. They could
write books and be famous from doing it. So it's
no wonder given that, and given what you just mentioned
that trust in the media, according to the Gallop polling,
is the lowest it's ever been. And it almost tracks
with you know, starting with the Russian collusion stories. The
first Trump turn is when the media became such an
oppositional press with an agenda, and it's the trust that
the American people had in the media was just falling
precipitously in the mainstream media because they saw it was
just you know, no longer looking to tell what happened.
I have a friend who's we have a professor in
our program actually, who has been a longtime journalist, has
been writing in practicing journalism since the seventies. But he's
some when he went to graduate school, to a good
journalism school, you know, they were taught to report on
what they see, not slanet one way or the other,
but go witness an event, cover an event, and then
report to people what you saw. He said, It's almost
like when he would come home from the movies and
his grandmother said, tell me about the movie you saw. Yeah,
he'd tell her about it. But that certainly was lost
in this country and the media, and I think it
can be recovered. But we saw just kind of a
disappearance between the difference between the editorial and opinion section
and the news section. They didn't need to really separate
him anymore some major newspapers because he read as much
opinion as you did reporting on the news pages.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. It's been quite a change, and it's
been jarring, and as you mentioned, it hasn't slipped the
attention of the American news consumer. Our guest today is
Roger Reim, president of the Fund for American Studies, going
to talk a little bit more about the good work
that organization is doing here in a moment, but to
further expound upon your piece National Review regarding the state
of that media in essence in the main corporate media. Again,
I'm old enough to remember the same kinds of principles. Now,
you just report on what you see, give me the numbers,
show me the documents, and never ever bring an anonymous
source unless you've got a bunch of backing on that
with documents and just how it was until, of course,
I was told, you know, what we really want to
focus on is community journalism. That was the phrase that
was used, Roger, And then I found out quickly what
community journalism was. I was doing an investigative piece on
a supermarket Chaine at a newspaper where I worked, and
I found some alarming things about that. I got a
source and got some very good documents to show it,
and the story didn't see the light of day. And
of course that had nothing to do with the fact
that the grocery store chain, supermarket chain was our number
two advertiser. So economics certainly has always played part or
has long played a part in journalism, uh, and at
newspapers and at news outlets. But it really is becoming
more and more desperate for these organizations. But still oftentimes
they're not getting it, are they.
Speaker 2: Yeah? I remember that uh that that you know, push
forward community journalism, very well funded heavily by the Pew
Charitable Trust, pushing that around the country. You know. The
one example which I don't know that I touched on
in my piece that I think is the most telling
one recently was the President Biden's health. Uh you know
it was it was the best kept secret or what
is the u It was not a good, very well
kept secret because people realized his mental acuity was slipping,
but the media wouldn't write about it. And then when
the Wall Street Journal did a story in late May
early June of twenty twenty four about, you know, citing
lots of unnamed sources, members of Congress, foreign foreign to
heads of state and their officials that the President was
not participating actively in meetings, that they were questioning his
mental acuity. The Wall Street Journal got attacked viciously by
the New York Times, by the networks for making up
the story, for not citing their sources, saying it's not true.
The mainstream media was covering up for the president's health.
And then, you know, a few weeks later, he debated
Donald Trump, and it was like the curtain was pulled
back and everyone realized it. But there was a withering
attack on the Wall Street Journal for writing a story
questioning his health because they were breaking from the orthodoxy
of the mainstream media, and uh, you know, it was
just a complete cover up. Reasons it was a complete
cover up.
Speaker 1: I remember the New York Post with a similar situation
with the Hunter Biden laptop. And I remember this organization,
my beloved organization, the Federalist not only being attacked for
debunking the Russian collusion hoax, because that's that's what it was,
and Uh, we quickly ultimately learned. Quickly, we ultimately learned
just the political mechanisms going on, you know, the people involved,
the d NC, the Clinton campaign buying opposition research and
that being published without any responsible journalism going on by
so many. But not only was the Federalist attacked and
criticized for you know, reporting on what the accomplice media demand.
It was a false storyline. We were censored. In fact,
as we speak right now, our editor in chief Molly
Hemingway is on Capitol Hill testifying about the censorship that
attempted to wipe out news organizations like the Federalists simply
for doing what good reporters should be doing, questioning the storyline.
That's a big problem that is not going to be
solved overnight. Is that problem going to be ultimately solved
in your estimation.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it will be. And you know, I
have great admiration for the Federalist and your editor, Molly Hemingway,
who received a Phillips Foundation Robert Novak Journalism Award, which
is a program we now run at the fun for
American Studies. It's places like the Federal List and a
few others I could name that Fortunately, we're reporting the
truth through these various different scandals in the media, and
they were getting censored for it. Many of them were
suspended from Facebook or Twitter other sites for a time,
and yet you stuck to publishing the truth. And now you've,
you know, in a sense, I guess got some redemption
from it, and in that you're now you know, I
think there's been a great, great pushback against censorship, but
we have to keep alert at all times. Eternal vigilance
is the key on that matter of free expression and
free speech, or it'll happen again. But at least you
didn't power. You were courageous, and you're an example we
can teach to other journalists of being a courageous leader
by you know, still reporting despite the to get you
We just we recently had the enter of the Babylon
Bee speaking on e vent of ours and they were
another one that was you know, canceled from Twitter, that
was fact checked for satire. They were publishing just to
maze and you know, fortunately we withstood that because you know,
there are plenty of examples in history where censorship goes
too far and you go past the point of no return.
But fortunately we're seeing a fresh breeze blowing through our
country right now. In that regard, Now.
Speaker 1: You talk about in your piece that the industry, the editors,
the publishers, the owners of these news organizations are learning
some lessons. They've been painful lessons, mainly on the financial side.
But as you note the Gallop polling showing just thirty
one percent of Americans have you know, substantial faith in
the media industry. First of all, yeah, I want to
know who those people are. I'm an all shaded reporter,
so maybe maybe you've got to discount me. But it's
it's it's amazing, isn't it Just what we've seen over
the last decade plus in this country, the erosion of
trust in journalism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it started, you know, I saw the figures in
the nineteen seventies, trust in the radio, and then it
was mainly newspapers, TV and radio. But it was about
two thirds of Americans trusted, you know, we listened to
Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley at night and felt
that we were getting most of the news reported fairly.
But by the late nineties it was down to fifty
three percent, and now it's down to thirty one percent,
as you said, and thirty three percent do not trust
the media very much at all. So it's worrisome. It's
very worrisome. And of course, as everyone knows, the media
has become very divided. There's there's the you know, left
of center media that people with that inclination generally watch,
and then there's the centrist right right of center media
that people of those views tend to watch. And so
it's caused great polarization in our society. But you know,
we need to get back to trusted media sources like
the Federalists that people can read and know they're getting
good information or good opinion, you know, and you know,
people need to be able to be critical thinkers and
separate the opinion they get from the reporting they get.
Speaker 1: You know this in your piece, and I think before
we conclude our conversation, I really wanted to touch upon this
point you said. Recently, some outlets have highlighted a supposed
historic war on traditional media by the Trump administration. Others
accused the administration of developing quote a new state. Media
Reporters Without Borders described American press freedom as being quote
under siege one month into Trump's term. Others call for
increased solidarity among media organizations through boycotts and walkouts against
the White House. One prominent media executive even suggested a
quote NATO for news to defend mainstream media against the
Trump administration. And this is my question, my ultimate question
for you, Roger. When I remember at the beginning of
the first Trump administration, I've told this story before on
this podcast. My source was receiving a whistleblower award from
a local Freedom of Information Council chapter, and it was
an interesting affair. I walked in, though, and I see
all of the traditional journalists from the local newspapers, the
state newspapers, the television stations, and they're all wearing resistance
TV shirts. Again, this is like a few months into
the first Trump administration, and there were, you know, speeches
about how journalism was under assault by the Trump administration
and by conservatives in power at that time. It seems
that the more things have changed, the more they've stayed
the same, just by what you have written about. Will
we get past this kind of thing where everything, it
seems in journalism, in corporate media journalism in particular, is
all about trying to undermine the Trump administration. For every
single thing it proposes.
Speaker 2: I think we will. And that's one thing we're focused on,
the fun for American studies. We a little over two
years ago we started a Center for Excellence in Journalism
and we're going out to college campuses and we're we're
supporting the creation and trying to sustain independent newspapers on
campuses and involving students with the opportunity to get a
taste of journalism when they're in college, a chance to
gain some experience in it, to write, to do investigative reporting,
and get it published in these independent papers in many
schools where the official newspaper may not support them. So
we're giving them training and then we hope to feed
them into fellowship programs that we sponsor when they graduate,
so they will pursue careers in journalism. You know, many
of these kids otherwise would probably go into investment banking
or to law school. We jokingly call this the law
school prevention program because if we can, if we can
give them a fellowship or an internship or something that
gives them a taste for a career in journalism, then
hopefully they'll be they'll fall in love with the career
choice and they'll go in to news media and then
we can try to get them placed at major media organizations.
Speaker 1: Roger, can I tell you something, just with just with
that area of your mission, you're doing the Lord's work again,
diverting kids from the practice of law, although you're sending
them into journalism and old Jada journalists like myself. I
wonder sometimes, but no, you are doing the Lord's work
in that. But let me ask you this. We're seeing
a lot of money thrown out there from leftist organizations
that have infiltrated newsrooms and the production of news across
this country. Can you keep up with that onslaught that
we're now seeing state by state at state bureaus across
the country.
Speaker 2: Well, well, that remains to be seen. I think the
efforts were There's some other organizations we work with as
well that are trying to, you know, develop better reporting
at the local level, at the state level. I think
the fact that that the administration has opened up the
newsrooms to this alternative media, with the flourishing of media
like the Federalists and other online sources, I think there'll
be lots of opportunities for talented young journalists who are
courageous to get into the profession, and you know, we don't.
We're waiting to see what happens at places like the
Washington Post. But that's a place where we hope we
can get some of these conservative journalists. And they may
not even use the labeled journalists conservative rather, but they're
fair reporters and they know how to report a story fairly.
If we can get them placed at places like the Journal.
We've got them at the Wall Street Journal and then
at the Washington Post. You know, I think they will
have a great career in the future, and the creamal
rise to the top if they're good reporters. So I
sure hope we're successful at this because you know, a
free country, a democracy, every country needs an honest and
fair news media, both to hold public officials to account,
to promote transparency, to create an informed citizenry. So a
lots at stake here, and we're going to do our
best to see that we accomplish what we're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree with you more. It is effectively and
my humble opinion, I mean that is a free press.
A free press that is a fair press is absolutely
foundational to the survival of the Republic. Let me ask
you our final question for you, the human resources question
or the job interview question. Where do you see this profession?
Where do you see this industry ten years from now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a great question because that's what young
people want to know if they're going to go into
this as a career. They want to make sure they
can make a career of it. But I think it
has a future for good journalists. They'll always be a
desire for getting news of what's happening in the country.
It'll come in different ways. You know, the printed newspaper,
you know, I still like that, but you know, more
and more students, young people rather learn their news online,
through different websites, through listening to podcasts, So those are opportunities.
You know, a journalists today not only carries a notepad
to write down notes and write a story, but he
has a phone in his hand, he does video, he
does tweets and Instagram postings and things on the website.
So I think it requires multi talented skills, and most
young people are developing those. So if they do and uh,
you know, they know how to write. That's another thing
that can be a challenge for some young people. Indeed
they can have a successful career and uh as a journalist,
so I think it's worth pursuing as a career.
Speaker 1: Well, the old timers like to talk about back in
my day, but I remember calling in a story on
deadline on a payphone, so that that's something I don't
think the young journalist of today could even imagine that
there was, you know, a phone that you would put
you know, quarters into at that time. It was a
dime before that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, you'd explained to the younger people listening
what a payphone is.
Speaker 1: I should ah, much as much has changed as you say,
and we will see more and more change moving forward.
I hope ultimately change comes in a good direction. I
think that we're seeing the growth of citizen journalism is helping.
There are some limitations to that as well, but I
think that's a big part of what could be positive
moving forward on this front and holding our government and
our leaders accountable. But we shall see. Time will tell.
It is an interesting and an important conversation to have,
and the work that you folks are doing is, as
I said before, absolutely critical.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, it's been a pleasure to talk about
this important topic. I just think you know who doesn't
want impartial objective reporting and truth telling. And I don't
care whether you're on the left, the right, or the middle.
That should be something we should all agree on. Let's
have impartial, objective reporting and truth seeking by journalists, and
that'll help us all make better decisions, both in our
lives as well as in the arena.
Speaker 1: Absolutely thanks to my guest today, Roger Rehim, president of
the Fund for American Studies. You've been listening to another
edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle's senior
elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more.
Until then, stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.