Western Standard - September 25, 2026


Trump bars CNN from the White House — and Fox leads the boycott

Mentioned
Donald Trump Obama Stew Peters Peter Loesch Peter Loge William Randolph Hearst Liz Kelly Nelson Thomas Jefferson Stephen Harper Jason Kenney Benjamin Franklin Nick Shirley Barry Weiss Jim Acosta John Adams Buildings Politico Gannett Stakes Brady and 1 more
Cory Morgan： Eby’s snap election gamble is already backfiring CORY MORGAN SHOW： The independence movement IS NOT GOING AWAY no matter what

Episode Stats


Length

30 minutes

Words per minute

191.43

Word count

5,921

Sentence count

279

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I'm Willie Tan Tan for the Western Standard.
00:00:01.940 Just a few days ago, U.S. President Donald Trump
00:00:04.100 barred CNN from covering him at the White House.
00:00:06.760 This has now triggered multiple media outlets,
00:00:09.460 including Fox News, to lead a boycott
00:00:11.520 and not cover him at the White House.
00:00:14.380 Of course, there are concerns over freedom of the press
00:00:17.100 and access, and I talked to Peter Loge,
00:00:20.100 a professor and the director of school and media
00:00:24.020 and public affairs at the George Washington University.
00:00:26.920 He also served previously as an advisor to multiple members of Congress and to the FDA under the Obama administration.
00:00:35.540 He's covered mainly American health care policy, but also famously helped pioneer political engagement online by bringing the first member of Congress online.
00:00:44.340 Also, he has provided contributions to NPR and BBC in the area of political satire.
00:00:51.480 Peter Loge joins me now.
00:00:56.920 from the basque country in the french basque country awesome all right so we're live
00:01:08.200 i'm willing to have time for the western standard here with peter loge peter thank you so much for
00:01:13.600 your time speaking to the western center today uh thanks very much for the invitation always a
00:01:18.020 pleasure so peter this conversation around the freedom of the press and specifically access to
00:01:23.340 the White House started around that time, a few days ago, when Trump revoked CNN's credentials.
00:01:29.360 First of all, how is it even possible from the White House? I mean, who handles accreditation
00:01:35.080 in D.C., and how can President Trump influence that? Well, obviously, the White House press
00:01:43.100 pool, the press room, the Brady room is at the White House, and the administration controls
00:01:47.340 access to that. And it was not just CNN, but it's also MSNOW and Politico, three media outlets,
00:01:52.400 three of the many many credentialed media outlets and trump just said i don't like you you can't come
00:01:56.960 in um stripping your credentials so they couldn't get past security as a result everybody else in
00:02:03.280 the pool led by fox news whose editorial side is obviously pretty conservative said well you know
00:02:08.880 if they can't come we aren't coming and and it's basically been a um a boycott then of the the
00:02:15.840 major media outlets of the white house press room well remember this you know looking back
00:02:22.080 back in history, there was a time where Fox News was excluded themselves and other media outlets.
00:02:26.680 This was, I believe, in 2012 in the Obama administration. So as a principle, mainstream
00:02:32.180 and big media outlets have taken a block together and moved away. There are, of course, some outlets
00:02:37.680 that continue to offer the coverage, but most of the pool cameras are gone. And effectively,
00:02:41.860 light camera action isn't there for President Trump as much now as there was before. But he
00:02:46.640 is starting his own kind of White House network channel. First of all, what's your reaction to
00:02:51.680 that and this whole situation? And what do you feel like the replications are for press freedom?
00:02:56.700 You know, really good questions. And the first, it's important to note,
00:02:59.280 the president is just banning them from one place at one time. He's not saying CNN has to,
00:03:04.540 you know, shut its doors. One of his arguments that he can still cover me, even though he was
00:03:09.500 apparently surprised there were a CNN reporter is covering him at the UN General Assembly meeting in
00:03:13.620 New York earlier this week. So there's, there's still some level of access. It's terrible news
00:03:19.020 for press freedom. It's terrible news. I mean, if an elected official likes something a reporter
00:03:25.200 says all the time, that reporter isn't doing their job. Part of the job of the press is to
00:03:29.340 frankly be a pain, is to call officials to account, right? I've worked in politics most of my career
00:03:35.180 in the U.S. House, in the Senate, in one presidential administration. And I didn't
00:03:39.300 always love what reporters wrote about me or my boss. But that's part of the gig, right? And saying
00:03:45.640 that CNN can't cover you because you don't like what CNN says sort of misses the point of the
00:03:50.800 First Amendment and misses the point of the heart of democracy, which we argue about things.
00:03:55.780 You don't have to agree with CNN. You don't have to like MSNBC or Fox or whomever,
00:04:00.280 but you can't prevent them from being in the room because you don't like their stories.
00:04:04.820 That's the opposite of democracy. The point of the First Amendment is to protect speech you don't
00:04:09.820 like, right? If it only protected speech you like, then you sort of miss the point of the First
00:04:14.880 Amendment. And President Trump has pretty clearly said, I only want to talk to reporters who like
00:04:20.360 me and write flattering things about me. That's bad for democracy. You know, I don't know how the
00:04:26.860 courts are going to rule, but I expect the courts are going to say that's also not allowed.
00:04:30.920 So I want to get a sense of the principle at play, which is press freedom and fairness,
00:04:36.740 of course. There are multiple barriers to access. I mean, as a journalist myself,
00:04:40.720 I understand that there is the accreditation level, which comes with a certain level of transparency, typically, you know, to expect if you will or will not be accredited based on the merits of the organization that you represent.
00:04:52.240 But also there are barriers of access in terms of information, in terms of knowing where and when an event will happen, if it's happening outside of the White House grounds.
00:04:59.620 Perhaps if you're a journalist in D.C. or if you're in Canada, like in Ottawa, maybe the prime minister or a leader of opposition or any other major figure might have events outside of the physical premise of what the accredited media area access is.
00:05:13.580 And that delay of information or that exclusion of information for certain journalists itself can also be another form of exclusion.
00:05:20.340 But from the official side of things, how devastating is this to the precedent of press freedom in the U.S.?
00:05:28.260 Because, of course, you know, CNN, we're on the floor of the UNGA in New York and other outlets have caught the president and his colleagues and his administration figureheads across the country.
00:05:40.040 So, you know, losing White House access, how much coverage and how much potential scrutiny for coming from perhaps CNN, his least favorite outlet because of that scrutiny?
00:05:50.100 Well, do you think viewers will lose because of this single decision?
00:05:54.000 I think viewers are losing just the conversation with the president.
00:05:57.740 Right. And the press doesn't have to be fair. Reporters don't have to be fair.
00:06:02.120 They should be accurate. They should be fair. But that's not a standard. The First Amendment says
00:06:07.300 freedom of the press as long as you tell both sides fairly. It's just freedom of the press,
00:06:12.160 like it or not. Right. And, you know, President Obama didn't always like what conservative media
00:06:18.340 outwards said. President Trump doesn't always like what liberal media outwards said. Again,
00:06:21.480 that's kind of the point of the First Amendment. Anything that says to the American people,
00:06:26.520 you can't trust a journalist, you can't trust the press because they don't like me, is bad.
00:06:32.300 Trust in institutions across the board in the United States is cratering. The American people
00:06:37.680 don't trust elected officials. They don't trust government. They don't trust the press. They don't
00:06:41.520 trust higher education. Some of that distrust is earned. But some of it is because political elites
00:06:47.280 are saying you can't trust people whose opinions you don't like. You can't trust people who don't
00:06:52.300 look like you or pray like you or love like you do. That's tremendously bad for democracy, right?
00:06:58.300 Democracy relies on a level of social trust. And an elected official or candidate has to be able
00:07:03.960 to say with a straight face, you know, I really dislike your coverage. I think you're being unfair.
00:07:10.140 But you got to talk to them, right, in the White House press pool, in the press room where everybody
00:07:15.560 is allowed in. You cannot discriminate based on viewpoint. You can discriminate, as you said,
00:07:20.200 based on the size of the room, right, which is why they do pool reporting. If there's only room
00:07:24.300 for one reporter, you can't obviously let everybody in. If, you know, if it's in a remote
00:07:29.480 area, not everybody can go. If it's a private event, you can only have to invite your friends
00:07:34.100 or people with whom you agree. But this is the White House. The White House doesn't belong to
00:07:37.680 Donald Trump. The White House belongs to the American people. This is a press room for the
00:07:41.900 American people so they can hear from their media outlets holding elected officials to account.
00:07:48.520 Barring media outlets that the president doesn't like or who write nasty things about him in the people's house is fundamentally anti-democratic.
00:07:59.280 And the other part is it also fits a bigger pattern, right?
00:08:03.080 So this isn't just kicking reporters out.
00:08:06.220 This is trying to deny press credentials to Jim Acosta not that long ago.
00:08:10.440 It's threatening to yank broadcast licenses from media outlets.
00:08:14.920 It's threatening to sue and suing major media outlets.
00:08:17.820 None of those lawsuits work, but they're a pain and they're expensive, right?
00:08:22.080 There's a pattern of this president of trying to intimidate the press, trying to quell free speech, trying to diminish democracy because it bothers him.
00:08:30.620 That's wrong.
00:08:32.840 So there was a time in, I believe it was in between 2019 and 2020, where, just to give you some context to the situation, because I know we have a little bit of a different system.
00:08:41.280 But when governments and provincial governments, I'll use Alberta as an example, we had a premier by the name of Jason Kenney.
00:08:47.820 who used to be a cabinet minister under Prime Minister Stephen Harper
00:08:51.540 and the previous concern of the government a little bit over a decade ago now.
00:08:55.540 When he was premier, he, of course, by tradition,
00:08:58.840 there are budgets that the provinces will pass.
00:09:02.140 Governing party traditionally prompts up a budget in the fall.
00:09:07.200 And there is something called the lockup,
00:09:09.240 which is when the media gets to look at that document
00:09:11.560 without publishing anything on the document within a certain time,
00:09:15.560 just to prepare and what i do in lockups is i look for the nitty-gritty details that i expect
00:09:20.920 my viewership to be most interested in and i prepare myself uh for publication as soon as the
00:09:26.760 kind of the lockup is all done and the publication ban is lifted um so that's a very critical piece
00:09:33.640 right there and there was a group called press progress it's a you can tell by its name a
00:09:37.560 progressive outlet funded indeed by uh you know a rather progressive think tank but you know they've
00:09:44.120 operated journalism professionally across the country for a number of time and the premier
00:09:48.520 given the fact that he didn't like them for other stories that they broke against his government
00:09:53.080 that where they didn't play well in the public he decided to kind of bar their accreditation so
00:09:58.360 we've seen that story play out even in canada unfortunately i just want to get a sense from you
00:10:03.640 where we are today with trump being the the figurehead the conservative figurehead and
00:10:08.120 you know the the media landscape today has changed there's lots more independent media i mean we are
00:10:13.480 at the western center we're independent independent media ourselves and you know we rely on you know
00:10:19.080 private viewership and subscription costs but in terms of the barrier to access and consistency
00:10:24.280 across left-right spectrum and looking at the future as well possibly this could be a blue
00:10:29.640 wave midterm and you don't know what happens in 2028 but do you see that there is an opportunity
00:10:36.280 to kind of bring consistent principled voices of free expression together so that whether this
00:10:41.960 comes from a democrat or republican in the future these kinds of things can kind of be avoided
00:10:47.200 altogether or combated pretty strongly like the way that we're seeing right now you raise a couple
00:10:52.380 of really interesting and important points um not the least of which is the canadian system is
00:10:57.620 different than the u.s i'm unfamiliar with the canadian system and i apologize to your
00:11:00.900 to your viewers and your listeners for anything i'm going to get wrong here um the second thing
00:11:05.900 you know which is important is that the media are changing right not only are you independent and
00:11:11.720 I'm glad you've got supporters. You've got to support independent media. You've got to pay
00:11:14.940 for content. But we also have now independent creator journalists, people who work outside
00:11:20.840 the system, who make their money with subscription models through Substack or YouTube channels.
00:11:26.420 And are they journalists? And how do you count them? It used to be relatively straightforward.
00:11:30.960 Handful of television outlets, handful of radio stations, handful of print papers.
00:11:35.040 Now you've got people in and out of the media ecosystem. How do you credential them?
00:11:38.820 who's legitimate and who's illegitimate. And we're wrestling with that, right? President Trump has
00:11:43.720 invited people into the press corps who haven't been traditionally part of what we consider
00:11:48.300 mainstream media. And part of that's to his credit, recognizing that people are getting
00:11:52.140 their information in different places than they used to, right? President Obama and President
00:11:56.820 Trump and President Biden all did that at their conventions. We're bringing different kinds of
00:12:00.500 reporters, right? We're talking to people where our voters are, not just, you know, where the
00:12:06.700 newspapers happen to be, and that's to his credit. The thing I think we're seeing, even in all these
00:12:11.880 changes, is media across the U.S. doing exactly what you said they should do, which is universally
00:12:19.660 condemn attempts to quell free speech, right? MS now, liberal bent. CNN, relatively straight
00:12:27.360 to the middle, a little bit liberal. Politico, I got no idea what BV's got at Politico. That's
00:12:31.440 an inside baseball publication for political nerds like you and me. Fox led the effort to say,
00:12:39.620 nope, they're not in, we're not in. The White House Correspondents Association, which is what
00:12:44.980 it sounds like, is led by the president of that is a Fox journalist. And they put out a pretty
00:12:50.840 strong statement saying this is a clear violation of the First Amendment. The Free Press, which is
00:12:55.700 a relatively new online publication founded by Barry Weiss, conservative outlet. She then went
00:13:00.300 over to CBS, came out with an op-ed, an editorial really condemning President Trump's move in no
00:13:06.240 uncertain terms. They weren't hedging their bets. This was a this is wrong statement. C-SPAN,
00:13:12.420 which is arguably the most boring news outlet on the planet. And I say this with love and respect
00:13:18.100 for the outlet. I know the CEO. They're the guys who set up cameras in Congress, turn the camera
00:13:24.240 on and walk away right this is just they put out a lengthy statement saying this is unacceptable
00:13:30.240 so i think across the board in this country you're seeing journalists and media outlets
00:13:35.480 online tv across the political spectrum saying this is wrong yeah and i think it's very interesting
00:13:44.300 to see because you know i think in the media landscape today not only do you have politicians
00:13:48.640 attacking media from all sides but you also have media attacking media as well and you know it's a
00:13:53.300 business model it's a free market and ultimately there's competitors everywhere and i understand
00:13:57.400 that very well coming from a climate where maybe there are traditionally less competitors i mean
00:14:02.280 canada's media landscape is formed by kind of two main opportunities you have the big corporate
00:14:08.060 media outlets like ctv news global news that have the backing of large media organizations
00:14:13.320 behind them and then you also have the cpc which is the public broadcaster funded by public taxpayer
00:14:18.780 of dollars. And of course, that presents itself with growing scrutiny in today's age when there's
00:14:24.080 a bit more polarization and a lot more room for questioning just about anything. But I want to
00:14:29.420 ask you, in principle, I know this is not the same situation in the US since PBS itself is a lot of
00:14:35.600 individual private donors on their own behalf. But how do you feel about publicly funded networks,
00:14:41.460 whether it be Al Jazeera and Qatar or the BBC in the UK or the CBC in Canada, in terms of just
00:14:47.280 having that editorial stance and public credibility? Do you think it's a good thing
00:14:50.720 to have publicly funded government determined funding to a media outlet that remains the
00:14:56.460 mainstream media source? Or do you think that kind of relationship puts in the question of
00:15:01.140 editorial independence? You know, that's a really good and important question. And I think it
00:15:05.480 depends on the country. I think it depends on the culture, the history, and what the other
00:15:08.640 editorial standards are. In a country like the US or Canada that have historically had freedom
00:15:14.480 of the press and a lot of plurality and a lot of open debate, at least until recently,
00:15:18.620 then it probably makes sense because you're part of the debate.
00:15:21.240 And if there are clear barriers in place, right, with nobody in the White House telling
00:15:26.840 PBS public broadcasting where they can or can't broadcast or print, that might make
00:15:31.760 more sense than in a place that's only ever had state-run media or doesn't have a strong
00:15:36.600 democratic tradition, right?
00:15:38.420 The press in the U.S. is relatively new compared to a lot of the rest of the world because
00:15:42.720 the U.S. is relatively new.
00:15:43.960 We're celebrating 250 years as if we're old and this is a huge achievement. There are bars in
00:15:49.600 Europe older than the United States of America. And we grew up in a rambunctious press environment.
00:15:54.880 Ben Franklin owned printing presses. People made stuff up about each other all the time. Thomas
00:15:58.780 Jefferson and John Adams made stuff up about each other and planted it in the press, and the press
00:16:03.300 is partisan. William Randolph Hearst arguably invented American involvement in Cuban independence,
00:16:09.460 telling a reporter to go to the Port of Havana where a U.S. battleship had sunk and saying,
00:16:15.580 you provide the pictures, I'll provide the war. This is kind of the rough and tumble of the media
00:16:20.840 in America. And so I feel more comfortable in a place like the U.S. with government-funded media
00:16:26.080 as long as the government doesn't exercise editorial control. And the moment they do,
00:16:31.800 voters tune them out. Because also at some point the market decides.
00:16:36.020 Just to tie this thing back into our main conversation, Peter. So again, CNN political, now a whole bunch of other outlets are out of the door, which means there's an empty space. And it looks like with Trump's history, you know, we had the Twitter issue and he was kicked off and then Truth Social became a thing.
00:16:52.580 I mean, it's still a thing. Frankly, most of his statements are coming out of JudeSocial for the purposes of promoting interest in that platform. So he's probably and I think he's already announced this vis-a-vis the White House Twitter channel that there'll be a new kind of a Trump TV network.
00:17:08.780 so i guess he's kind of creating his own you know publicly or government funded outlet to provide
00:17:17.000 news now i don't know what kind of format it could just be a pool camera or it could have
00:17:20.940 commentators and reporters i'm just curious how do you feel about that specifically because
00:17:26.100 what happened in canada with the cbc and i'll give you examples i know it's no great issue
00:17:30.360 with a lot of history and you know they've produced a lot of talented journalists over the
00:17:33.560 years. But ultimately, what provides that scrutiny is the political notion of maybe one side of the
00:17:40.320 spectrum, the Liberal Party, the current governing party, are willing to give that institution more
00:17:45.080 money, whereas consumers remain critical of their editorial position on a few issues with their
00:17:50.340 coverages, imbalances potentially, and of course the fact that the government party promised
00:17:56.560 increasing in funding. So there's that perception of conflict and liberal bias in Canada. But
00:18:01.440 perhaps in the U.S. where do you think Trump is heading with that and how can you see the link
00:18:05.860 between those kinds of potentials and outcomes? You know that's a really good question and it's
00:18:10.960 good to highlight Trump TV. It really bothers me as a taxpayer that I'm paying for a vanity
00:18:16.080 news channel for a guy who likes nothing more than to see his name on television.
00:18:20.540 I think one of the challenges we have in talking about Trump or covering him or doing analysis is
00:18:24.800 that people like you and me are used to politics the way politics works and people think why
00:18:28.360 of politicians. One of the reasons Donald Trump is so popular has been popular in the U.S.
00:18:33.200 Wildly unpopular now. But the reason he was initially popular is because he wasn't like a
00:18:37.600 politician. Right. Here's a guy who built his career in real estate, then in television by
00:18:43.640 renting his name to buildings and being the brand of Donald Trump. He's the anti-politician.
00:18:48.620 His job is to promote his name and his brand and then to monetize it. Right. So he's not
00:18:54.380 a politician trying to get attention for policies he likes. He's a guy who gets attention for a
00:19:00.380 living who happens to be working in politics. So, of course, he has Trump TV. Of course,
00:19:04.800 it's going to be all about Donald Trump. And of course, he's going to try to monetize it
00:19:07.580 because that's what he did with buildings and planes and stakes and Bibles and a TV show.
00:19:12.800 Like, of course, he's doing that. And the people who are going to watch are those who have to for
00:19:18.340 living, journalists, liberal watchdogs are to be angry about it, and true believers. I'm not sure
00:19:25.000 there's anybody who's going to be doing whatever the quote of channel surfing is to their apps
00:19:29.300 thinking, hey, who's this Trump guy I keep hearing about? I'm going to check out Trump TV.
00:19:33.680 Like, if you sign it up, you either love the guy or you have to for a living.
00:19:39.060 Right? And if I want to know what conservatives are thinking, I'm not going to go to Trump TV.
00:19:42.820 I'm going to read a conservative media outlet like the free press. If I want to know what the
00:19:46.940 liberals are thinking, I'm not going to go to, I don't know, AOC TV or something like that.
00:19:52.260 I'm going to read maybe MS Now or, you know, a liberal publication, right? And so of course he's
00:19:59.880 monetizing his name. Of course he's branding it about himself. That's what he did with Buildings
00:20:04.560 and Stakes and Bibles. I want to go back to a point you made in one of your answers, which was
00:20:09.320 defining a journalist given the modern landscape. I mean, again, we're not dealing with just the
00:20:14.240 press bureaus. I mean, print's seen a major decline, especially in Canada, because we're
00:20:19.140 a large country, geographically speaking, but population-wise, it's hard to keep a market in
00:20:23.000 many areas in terms of print press. And that's why the government's introduced a number of
00:20:27.180 subsidies just to keep people on the payroll and much less to keep preserving physical media or
00:20:33.880 even local media. So there's a number of initiatives where governments throw money into media. And
00:20:37.780 again, that still puts things into question. But before we get into the money side, just from a
00:20:43.360 definition perspective who should and how should one or should we even define a journalist given
00:20:50.060 again this massive multimedia market where perhaps a social media influencer like nick shirley
00:20:56.860 has much greater and more effective reach than uh maybe most of the fox news press team
00:21:02.240 you ask a question a lot of people around the world are asking certainly around the u.s we ask
00:21:07.760 it a lot here in the school of media and public affairs of the george washington university
00:21:11.080 I have a fellow in my program called Liz Kelly Nelson.
00:21:14.740 He spent decades in what we call traditional media at the Washington Post and Gannett, who now is helping independent producers and independent journalists make a living as independent journalists.
00:21:24.960 And she's bringing traditional journalistic standards to independent creators, but also helping them pay the bills.
00:21:31.580 Right. This stuff costs money. 0.99
00:21:33.060 You're not doing this. You're doing this partially for the love of journalism.
00:21:37.260 But it looks like you got a good good setup over there.
00:21:39.920 Somebody's going to pay for that chair, right?
00:21:42.440 And so we're wrestling with what that means here in the U.S., and hopefully something
00:21:47.400 will emerge with good standards.
00:21:51.020 We're going to be launching programs about that here at the George Washington University.
00:21:55.440 Other universities around the U.S. are also trying to launch this.
00:21:58.840 Journalism became professionalized in the 20th century in the U.S., building journalism
00:22:03.180 schools, things like that.
00:22:04.560 It's undergoing a massive financial change.
00:22:07.780 And we are trying to figure out what that looks like and how to make sure there's responsible journalism.
00:22:13.020 And to your point about the government subsidizing outlets to make sure that there's actually news outside of the major capitals.
00:22:22.420 Right. One of the things we know is that local media strengthens democracy.
00:22:27.800 Right. In areas with strong local media, newspapers or radio or TV, people go to city council meetings.
00:22:34.480 Politics isn't just polarized.
00:22:35.660 you know they focus on the issues that matter to them and their town roads or schools or whatever
00:22:40.940 if there are no local media people are isolated news becomes nationalized people become polarized
00:22:47.700 there's more corruption because there's no local reporter chasing the local elected official down
00:22:52.680 going hey i couldn't notice couldn't help but notice you got a nice new car tell me about how
00:22:57.120 much money you make and where that came from right so we're trying to figure out how do we have
00:23:02.080 robust local media which is critical to democracy how do we have responsible journalism how do we
00:23:06.560 hold federal officials any government official to account and how do we do it in a way that
00:23:11.080 allows you and your colleagues doing the critical work of journalism to actually pay the bills
00:23:15.400 so i mean in terms of making that definition again i i myself as a journalist and i have
00:23:21.380 you know associated with a number of you know journalist unions organizations accreditation
00:23:25.820 unions and bodies that give me access to parliament and other Canadian institutions
00:23:31.720 and other international bodies as well. And in my experience, it's typically a lot to do with
00:23:36.460 the fact that your organization is set up in a certain way, you know, that the money stream is
00:23:40.100 understood. But also in terms of your work, you know, do you produce original content? It isn't
00:23:46.120 a question of just copying, you know, double pasting everything off from other outlets,
00:23:52.680 but actually producing your own content um i i just want to understand if we're going to make
00:23:58.320 this definition in your view given the fact that you're looking to you know protect press freedom
00:24:04.620 and association and respect the first amendment in the u.s what are some of the keys i mean in
00:24:11.840 terms of who actually makes this definition because again if you put this in the eyes of
00:24:15.340 a political authority there will be a lot of scrutiny um and there could be a lot of unfairness
00:24:20.160 as well so kind of what are some of the conditions that you hope for as academia and as the private
00:24:25.360 and the public sector look at this question in the near future what are you kind of things that
00:24:30.240 you're really concerned about in terms of actually having proper definition and i would add the other
00:24:34.940 thing i'm concerned about is as a citizen right i live in downtown washington dc i pay taxes
00:24:40.180 there's a lot of construction on my block i got rats in my alley i've got a lot of things i'm
00:24:45.240 worried about. I think for me, what I look for when I'm consuming news is, is the journalist
00:24:52.540 providing context? Is the journalist being fair? I don't want equal sideism, right? I just want
00:24:59.800 a clear, compelling explanation of what the events are, what I need to care about,
00:25:06.800 why I need to care about them. There's some journalism that's different. I'm a big soccer
00:25:10.540 guy. I want to know who's starting, who scored, who's injured, right? That's a different kind
00:25:16.080 of a journalism that I want out of my local journalism, which is what's my city council
00:25:19.620 member doing about, you know, garbage pickup and rats. I need to understand a more complicated
00:25:25.360 situation, what's going on in across the African continent, right? You got to help me understand
00:25:32.000 the history maybe of the Democratic Republic of Congo. What was a colonialism, post-colonialism,
00:25:37.980 because I'm not as familiar with that.
00:25:39.240 I want to look for journalists
00:25:39.900 is to help me,
00:25:41.340 give me the information I need
00:25:42.680 to make informed decisions,
00:25:43.840 to be a better citizen,
00:25:45.560 a better participant of my community
00:25:46.940 and a better participant to my democracy.
00:25:49.600 And the other part of it is
00:25:50.520 because I know journalists
00:25:51.900 and because I run a program
00:25:54.880 that teaches journalism,
00:25:56.020 I want to make sure that good people
00:25:57.920 can make a decent living
00:25:59.620 doing important work.
00:26:00.840 And that also matters to me.
00:26:03.020 And that means
00:26:03.920 if you're getting paid by a sponsor,
00:26:06.340 I want to know who that sponsor is.
00:26:07.980 It doesn't mean you're biased, but at least give me a heads up as a reader.
00:26:13.060 If it's entirely supported by by readers, you know, I want to know that, too, because now I feel like, OK, maybe you've got a different bias because you've got to do what the readers want, which might be boring.
00:26:25.620 But you got like at least let me know. Like what the outside forces are that are helping you decide what to cover, who to cover and how to cover it.
00:26:35.780 I want to know what's going on.
00:26:37.140 Like, tell me what I need to know to be a good citizen.
00:26:38.960 For me, that's what good journalism is.
00:26:40.940 I'll be a little bit candid with you for this last question.
00:26:43.000 I want to, you know, just from my end, you know, as an employee and as a journalist at the Western Standard, I always view bias from a certain lens.
00:26:50.680 There's two kinds of biases that I really pay more attention to, even as a viewer.
00:26:54.820 You know, the editorial institutionalized bias and the organic biases.
00:26:59.660 I mean, again, my company is based in Alberta.
00:27:02.380 Alberta is an oil-rich province, kind of like the Canadian Texas, you could say.
00:27:06.500 So in terms of its national resources economy, a base economy, rather, you know, issues of
00:27:11.960 coverage in the economy will have a lot to do with natural gas and oil.
00:27:14.640 So maybe there's not going to be as much talk about, you know, the alternatives, perhaps,
00:27:19.980 in other parts of the country.
00:27:21.180 And so when there's an issue focus that might sway a certain direction, there might also
00:27:24.980 be a certain natural demographic or political reaction as such.
00:27:28.440 Maybe the politicians I've talked to the most are going to be considered politicians who
00:27:31.680 pushing more of this industry not necessarily because there's an oil money machine behind me
00:27:36.960 because there's not um so just to make that clear i think there's that organic bias that kind of
00:27:42.260 makes sense not skewing what you are saying but maybe skewing how you pick a topic in the morning
00:27:47.860 pitch call right uh and i would say maybe the editorial side is when you actually have individuals
00:27:53.040 who are intervening kind of from the commentary section to the news reporting section and
00:27:58.780 We're just putting their hands in too many places to avoid journalists from doing their own work.
00:28:03.080 And that's, I think, a really important part about the opportunities around media today.
00:28:07.080 I mean, a lot of teams don't necessarily meet so often.
00:28:10.560 Journalists not only are working for independent outlets or working independently,
00:28:14.000 but even among smaller to medium-sized newsrooms,
00:28:17.340 you have to be in more than one place to cover the ground in North America.
00:28:21.160 We're such big countries, both Canada and the United States.
00:28:23.140 So journalists are working on their own.
00:28:25.140 So when you look at bias as a viewer yourself,
00:28:27.240 Maybe not just as an academic, but also as a viewer, kind of when you're looking at credibility of the article or of the journalist in question, what are some of the things that you look at, including, of course, sources of funding?
00:28:41.120 That's a really good question. And you really hit on, I think, the biases we don't talk about a lot in journalism, and that's agenda setting and framing.
00:28:48.200 A good journalist would tell me what matters. There's a lot going on in the world, right?
00:28:52.540 I'm going to tune into you and I'm going to say, oh, this, of all the things in the world I could care about, I should care about this.
00:28:58.040 And you're telling me what it's about, right?
00:29:00.780 What is the oil boom about?
00:29:02.080 What is shale about?
00:29:03.080 What are renewables about, right?
00:29:05.140 Is the oil industry about jobs?
00:29:06.760 Is it about natural resources?
00:29:08.200 Is it about providing safe and reliable sources of energy for Canada so you don't have to
00:29:13.520 rely on foreign imports?
00:29:14.920 You're framing it, right?
00:29:17.020 Is climate change an energy story?
00:29:19.880 Is it a climate story?
00:29:21.760 Is it a distribution story?
00:29:23.880 And the answer is yes.
00:29:24.940 the frame you pick determines the outcome of the story what's on the agenda determines it
00:29:30.520 and that's what your readers want right in western canada i would certainly hope they are covering
00:29:34.880 the oil and gas industry because that's what's there right i grew up in in connecticut on the
00:29:40.600 on the northeastern united states we covered the ocean a lot because i lived on the ocean
00:29:45.140 right of course you want that um but i wanted to like but i can also sort of suss that out
00:29:50.160 right? As a reader, I know what I'm getting, right? I read political news. I know who's
00:29:56.440 covering it. I think it's like, just don't lie to me. I think what I want out of an outlet,
00:30:01.240 I don't want to be surprised. I don't want to be surprised to find out really you're actually
00:30:05.200 based in something else. You know, I'm going to tune you out pretty quick if I think you're lying
00:30:11.800 to me. If I find out something bad about you, I think the marketplace kind of dries that a lot.
00:30:16.180 And I think as a responsible journalist, you provide information people need to be good citizens in a compelling way that makes them want to pay attention. Right. And then hopefully enough viewers, enough listeners, enough subscribers think you're doing a good job and, you know, subscribe where they pay you.
00:30:36.300 so you can actually continue to do that good job on which so many of us across Canada,
00:30:42.940 across the United States, across the world rely. Peter Loesch, thank you so much for your time.
00:30:49.980 Always a pleasure. Thanks again.