I don’t know how news/talk radio leaders do it.
Me, I read the news, listen to the discussions, and doomscroll social media, and I just… can’t. Everything’s fallen apart. The dumbest of the dumb, the biggest schoolyard bullies, the nutjobs who inhabit 4chan and QAnon, racists and xenophobes, people who closely resemble cartoon villains but worse — that’s who’s in charge. For many of you, your job is to talk about it or report on it, and I can’t imagine how hard that is.
Honestly, I can’t imagine how a reporter can listen to the president or any of his lackeys without screaming, let alone asking tough questions and follow-ups (which few bother to do). The federal government is weaponized against its own citizens using pretenses that would be comical if they weren’t happening in real life. All checks and balances are gone, the guardrails removed by a Supreme Court that must have been absent the day they taught about separation of powers in law school or even high school history class. I don’t know how you aren’t all losing your collective minds over, well, everything.
But it’s your job, isn’t it? You’re in the information business, and truth is supposed to be Job One. Talk radio is a lost cause, of course, with hosts defending the indefensible either because they’ve lost the ability to discern truth from fiction or reality from conspiracy theory, or because they’ll say whatever will let them keep their jobs and stave off listener complaints. As a veteran of that particular medium, I’m embarrassed to even think about having been part of it.
But talk radio’s not alone, not while Fox News and Newsmax are around to preach to the converted. The same goes, to a lesser extent, for MSNBC — or whatever it’s going to be called when it gets spun off from NBCUniversal. CNN can’t decide what it is, which is troubling, and neither can The New York Times, The Washington Post, or the Los Angeles Times. The media is part of the problem, just not in the way right-wing politicians want you to believe. They’re not the “enemy of the people,” a phrase most often uttered by people with something to hide. They’re just not as interested in getting to the truth as they’re supposed to be.
Yes, I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how you go to work every day, see what’s happening, and control yourself. It can’t be easy. What I hope you do is not be afraid to tell the truth; this is not the time for both-sides “journalism.” It is time to ask yourself how you want to remember this era, how you want your kids and grandkids to think about what you did when this period of history was current — whether you were a fearless truth-teller or scared of the government and your own audience.
It takes courage to, for example, challenge lies from political powers, but someone has to do it. It takes courage to confront bullies. It takes courage not to fear the effects of exposing corruption or telling your audience what it doesn’t want to hear about its heroes.
Let me tell you a brief personal story. My mother was a Holocaust survivor, one of the few in her family who survived. To the day she died, she was terrified that “it could happen here,” and we used to tell her that, no, the world had learned its lesson and that kind of thing would never happen in America. She died in 1994, and I think of how she would feel about America today, and how I’m glad she didn’t experience this.
That’s why I hope that you resolve to tell the truth about what’s going on, because that’s the least you can do. I don’t know how you could do it any other way.
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Perry Michael Simon is a weekly news media columnist for Barrett Media. He previously served as VP and Editor/News-Talk-Sports/Podcast for AllAccess.com. Prior to joining the industry trade publication, Perry spent years in radio working as a Program Director and Operations Manager for KLSX and KLYY in Los Angeles and New Jersey 101.5 in Trenton. He can be found on X (formerly Twitter) @PMSimon.
