With 20-plus years in the industry and a long family history in media, it was only a shock to Chris Plante that he made it behind the mic and in front of the camera.
“I had never set out to be on the radio. I had never set out to be on television. And now I’m both on television and radio,” Newsmax host Chris Plante said to Barrett.
But his TV days are coming to a close. “Now that I’ve been doing [both TV and radio] for a little more than two and a half years at Newsmax, I ask myself frequently, why radio and television? I’m working from 5 AM to 7 PM five days a week. That’s a lot,” Plante reasoned.
“It’s at a bare minimum of a 14-hour workday, five days a week, and I’m asking myself, ‘Why radio and television?’”
He rhetorically answered, “The truth is, I’m kind of looking forward to getting back to radio only. And it’s not because I don’t like Newsmax. It’s because I don’t like my schedule anymore. It’s just too much of a workday and too much of a workweek.”
He is going back to his radio roots, and Plante believes the beauty of radio “is that it’s all you.” No hair and makeup, or “people to turn you into something you’re not. Radio is all you. It’s 100 percent you. Nothing but you.”
He went on to say, “Television, it’s you and 30 other people creating a product that goes out over the airwaves.”
While Plante is leaving the TV world, you will still be able to find him on social media, and of course, radio. “In the 21st century, digital media is so ubiquitous and a part of absolutely everything, not just in media, but in everyone’s daily lives and everybody’s personal life.”
Plante added, “[Social media’s] outreach to your audience is a much more direct outreach than you can have, certainly on television, because people interact personally with social media in ways that they could never interact with television or television shows or television personalities.”
While social media might be considered an accessory to TV, Plante sees it as “almost an expansion of what you’re already doing, because radio is very personal and it’s very interpersonal. And the interaction you have with the audience is very human and very three-dimensional.”
Jokingly, he opined, “Nobody calls in to the Wolf Blitzer show saying, ‘Hey, you just got that wrong’ … Nobody calls into CNN and gets on the air and says, ‘Here’s what you got wrong.’ And it might help CNN if they started doing that, actually.”
A third-generation news hawk, it is ubiquitously known that Plante grew up in a CBS household, as the step-son of longtime CBS News correspondent Bill Plante. He says this upbringing made him “raised with certain beliefs as to what journalism is supposed to be.” Plante added that the “ideal of journalism” he was raised with is “hard to find these days.”
“I believe in good journalism,” Plante affirmed. “Real journalism is important to the proper function not only of our constitutional republic, but also the proper function of our culture and our society.”
“I think that a good deal of what is wrong in our culture and our society and our politics today has gone south because of a corrupted news media, which does not play the role that the fourth estate is supposed to play in order to guarantee the proper function of our republic: holding feet to the fire of our elected officials and doing so in an even-handed and fair way,” Plante surmised. “I think every American recognizes that the American media has fallen down on the job.”
Pressing him on why he believes journalism died, Plante said, “I could do a semester on this.” One major example he often points to is “Watergate.”
“Woodward and Bernstein became the stuff of Hollywood movies,” the Newsmax host said. “In journalism schools, they’re teaching not that you should be providing straight journalism for the betterment of mankind, but that you should be advancing a political agenda.”
Plante claims that instead of viewing Watergate as two journalists doing their job, the famed incident is viewed as “the two guys at the Post brought down Richard Nixon. And that’s not their job to bring down Richard Nixon, it’s their job to report the news.”
He later added, “Out of the Watergate era, a school of thought emerged in journalism schools and in newsrooms across the country that you’re supposed to be an activist, and not a straight journalist. Activism is not journalism, and journalism is not activism. And ne’er the twain shall meet.”
The longtime radio host is hoping for a future where the journalistic values he grew up with flourish. “There are pockets of journalism that still exist, but they’re getting hard to find.” He added, “Thank God for Al Gore and his amazing internet, because it has democratized the dissemination of information, analysis, and reporting.”
He pointed to Nick Sortor as an example of great journalism. “[He] went to Minneapolis and found the Somali daycare centers where there are no kids and no daycare going on. And yet they’re taking in millions and millions of taxpayer dollars. In fact, billions of taxpayer dollars every year.”
Plante went on to say, “Nick Sortor broke news that George Stephanopoulos didn’t break, that the New York Times didn’t break. So if you’re looking for journalism, it’s out there, but it’s going to be that man there and that woman there and this website there. But it’s not likely to be The New York Times or ABC News.”
Plante’s advice for those looking to follow in his footsteps is blunt. “I tell them to get a degree in business and go into business, and don’t go into journalism. That’s what I tell college-age people.”
Despite all the doom and gloom in the industry, Plante believes, “There are still some of us around [who want to tell the truth], but you have to find an outlet. It may be online, it may be on television. Wherever it may be, there are outlets where the people there still want to tell the truth.”
He lastly noted, “Journalism is supposed to be about the truth, revealing the truth, and holding people accountable. And I’ve always found that to be very easy. The trick is to find the place where they’ll pay you to tell the truth, and you can build a career telling the truth.”
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Krystina Alarcon Carroll contributes features and columns for Barrett Media. She has experience in almost every facet of the industry including: digital and print news; live, streamed, and syndicated TV; documentary and film productions. Her prior employers have included NY1 and Fox News Digital and the Law & Crime Network. You can find Krystina on X (formerly twitter) @KrystinaAlaCarr.
What a laugh. This Trump shill has ZERO credibility.
Random guy on the internet making silly remarks: ZERO credibility.