Outkick founder and syndicated talk show host Clay Travis accused the Brookings Institute and the New York Times of teaming up to smear “The Clay & Buck Show” by labeling it a purveyor of misinformation. Travis resoundingly pushed back, claiming that the accusations were baseless and a deliberate attempt to silence their conservative viewpoints.
The claims were made in an analysis conducted by Brookings using data gathered from 79 popular political podcasters, comprising 36,603 episodes and 17,061 evaluations. The findings were then published in the New York Times. Researchers focused on several conservative podcasts, such as Clay & Buck, Dan Bongino, and Sean Hannity among others.
The Brookings Institute and The New York Times are independent organizations, but Brookings experts have written op-eds and articles for the paper on a wide variety of topics.
“They put this list on the front page of the New York Times business,” said Travis on Tuesday. “Buck and I endeavor every single day to be as honest and transparent with you as we can. Opinions are obviously only as good as the facts upon which they are based. So, if you get a fact wrong it only undercuts your own opinion because it’s built on a foundation of inaccuracy, that’s a basic explanation for what we try to do.”
Travis commented on the story, observing that it not only referred to the “Clay and Buck” show but also mentioned the “Rush Limbaugh Show.” He raised some concerns about the study’s credibility, given that Limbaugh had been deceased for two years, and Premiere Networks had been employing guest hosts until Rush’s time slot was permanently filled.
“My first thought is why are they tying Rush’s show into our show,” he said. “My second thought was, what in the world are they classifying as misinformation? This is the very definition of not only fake news but old news.”
Travis pointed out that Brookings Institute had only sampled his radio show for a period of six months. Travis mentioned that he had invited researchers to the show with the purpose of explaining how Clay and Buck were conveying misinformation to their audience.
“Brookings Institute finally got back to us last night and said they are not available for an interview,” he said. “We offered them any day this week and said we will make time for them and your lead researcher who is familiar with the findings.”
“This article was designed to attack this program and keep us from being widely distributed,” Travis added.
Prior to co-hosting “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show,” Clay hosted FOX Sports Radio’s weekday morning-drive program, Outkick the Coverage
