Josh Rosales Speaks Out
Josh Rosales tackles topics ranging from politics and social justice to culture, economics, and everything in between. Instead of shying away from away from controversial subjects, he encourages open dialogue and meaningful discourse.
What sets this podcast apart is its commitment to highlighting the voices of the community. The host invites a diverse array of guests, including activists, community leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, and everyday citizens, ensuring that multiple viewpoints are represented and respected. Through these conversations, listeners gain a comprehensive understanding of the issues at hand and are encouraged to take action within their own communities.
Josh Rosales Speaks Out
Championing Factual Journalism in a Biased Era
Join the conversation with David, a seasoned journalist with a treasure trove of experience, as we navigate the labyrinthine world of modern news media. Prepare to have your perspective broadened, as we tackle the monumental task of sifting through biased reporting to uncover the elusive truth. As the landscape of media consumption transforms before our eyes, from the steadfast print of yesteryear to the whirlwind of today's 24-hour news cycle, we engage in a candid discussion that will leave you questioning what you know about the platforms feeding us our daily information diet.
This episode is a journey through the past, present, and future of journalism with a guide who's been in the trenches for over thirty years. We grapple with the nostalgia for the accountability once hallmarking print media and the rigor that should anchor contemporary journalism. Through vivid dissections of current events and their portrayal across various outlets, we underscore the critical role of multiple sources and the responsibility of journalists as history's scribes. As algorithms curate our digital experience, listen in for a masterclass on the importance of open-mindedness and meticulous research in an era when the line between news and noise is increasingly blurred.
Thank you. How's it going everybody? Josh Rosales, here with the Josh Rosales Speaks Out podcast. I am your host, Josh Rosales, and I am super excited to have David with us as our guest. I want to thank our sponsor, Heyroofmancom. For all your roofing needs, from your minor repairs to your full roof replacement. Heyroofmancom has you covered. Call today for your free estimate 615-945-1492. That is 615-945-1492. One more time 615-945-1492. Or go to Heyroofmancom. Definitely. Heyrofman. com is a premier roofing company here in Middle Tennessee and they will treat you right. Super excited, Dave, to have you as a guest today on the Josh Rosales Speaks Out podcast and it's been a little while as we were talking and I'm super excited that we're able to catch up now. I see all your social media posts, your videos and very encouraging and you're doing great with what your podcast and your coaching and what you're doing, and so thank you for spending time with me today.
David:Absolutely. Glad to be here. Super honored to be on this show. When you reached out to me and said, hey, I want to talk about bias in the media, I was like, oh, wow, okay, we're going back to old school, Dave. Here I was doing the math today and I think I've been in journalism for about 30 years now. I know I don't look nearly old enough to have been in it that long, but I have been and so I'm really excited about talking about what news has evolved to over the last three decades. For sure.
Josh:Yeah, no, definitely. You know as you look and you listen to media and you go anywhere from CNN to MSNBC, to CBS, to NBC, to Fox News. I mean you get to a point now where you're not really sure who to trust, what news to trust. Everything is so slanted either one way or the other and you don't really have the newspapers anymore. I think the newspaper was probably the most non-biased news.
Josh:I remember years ago when I was in California and I would wake up early with my dad, we would do a newspaper route and it was kind of you get exactly what was happening, you get reports, you read the paper and then all of a sudden, just years went from newspaper to different forms of news and now it's more young people than ever get their news from TikTok and everything is just so slanted and it's just hard for people. It's crazy that a lot of people nowadays just don't trust the media and probably borderline hate the media and it's kind of like where do you get your news from and how do you know if it's a trusted source? Where do you get your news from and how do you know if it's a trusted source? Like for me, I have my sources of media that I follow and sometimes I have to like check two or three places. Sometimes you may have to watch a little bit of Fox News and a little bit of CNN or a these other different platforms.
David:All I'm trying to do is get some news right? So it's a task, there's no doubt about it. When I started in the business, you went to journalism school. You learned the inverted pyramid, ap style. You learned that you don't you use the word said instead of remarked and stated, and all that in your quotes. I mean you learned the framework. But now there's been generations now of journalism school graduates and I see it firsthand that come out with not necessarily indoctrination I think critical thinking is part of it but they come out with an advocacy-type mentality as opposed to a historian mentality.
David:My dad always used to say that it was our job as a newspaper to chronicle the history of our community, and I took that as what you would call a high calling. Hey, if I don't record it, and don't record it accurately, then generations down the line are going to look back at my work and have a distorted view of what the history was of my community. So, having been brought up that way, I was very aware of how to present the story. I could see, hear, smell, sense, but it was not my opinion as to what was going on. It had to be the story of whoever was the focal point of the article. So that's like the way back when. Now we're going to fast forward real fast to where we are now, somewhere in the middle.
David:There, cable television created 24-hour news and it's very hard to fill a 24-hour news cycle with facts, figures and stories to hold people's attention. So we had that come into play. So you have your CNN, who started the whole ball of wax thank you, ted Turner. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh wait, they seem too liberal. So Rupert comes in with his Fox News and his we Report. You Decide, and they became the anti-CNN. So as everything began to evolve, there's those of us in the newspaper industry that are still trying to do our job, but we're losing ground to the people that are getting the eyeballs more than we are. And you cannot pay the bills unless you have eyeballs. That's just the business nature of the beast. So as this began to evolve even further, if you'll notice, most television news programs are about five minutes news and 25 minutes arguing about that news. You know, let's go to our panel over here and we're going to argue about it Exactly, and then you have the TikTokers who are taking like a snippet of news and then they're reacting to it right, and it doesn't matter where you fall on the political cycle, wherever you land, there's going to be somebody there who's reacting to the news that's showing up in your feed.
David:Now I say all that to say this, because you asked a very pointed question. It's like well, what do I trust? Well, here's the thing who did you trust before? Who did you trust? Do you trust the conversation between you and I as being completely factual To any story? You tell me your own biases, whether you recognize them or not, based upon your worldview, your upbringing, your political leanings. It's just the way we are as human beings. So my advice and again, I don't mean to jump and get to the applicable points before we get to the end of the podcast, but the truth of the matter is you have to take some personal responsibility and do like you did and check three and four sources and then say somewhere in all of this mess is the truth. And now I want to bring a very strong distinction because I think it's vitally important.
David:There is a difference between community news and national slash big media news and national slash big media news. Most of the people who are running the small town radio station, the small town newspaper, whatever they're doing their job they're covering city council, they're writing up about what they see, they're covering high school football, whatever it's when you start getting into these bigger markets, when there's so much more competition for the eyeballs? Because, let's face it, I don't know if you know this or not, but, like every television personality, whether they're at a Nashville TV station or they're at network headquarters, they're on contract and they have to justify their contract and they have to renegotiate their contract as a television personality. And the only way you can ask for more money or, in some cases, keep your job is to prove that you're garnering enough eyeballs so that the ad department can go sell the ads and that the station or the entity can make money. That is the reality of where we're at, and sometimes people take it to a sensationalism degree in order to protect their job, in order to protect their career.
David:It's usually not as nefarious as a lot of people think, make it out to be, unless you're a TV exec, but that's a whole nother ball of wax. Yeah, and the same is true. Think about the blog and news articles you read now that show up in your Facebook feed. It used to be. There's a term called the inverted pyramid. I mentioned it a second ago and I know I'm going to ramble on a little bit, but I really know my stuff when it comes to this.
David:So in standard journalism you're supposed to do what's called the inverted pyramid. You have your most important items your who, what, when, where, in the lead paragraphs of your article and then you bring it down to where you have the backing up documentation as you go through, or the backing up quotes or whatever L´Jarius Sneed was signed to the Tennessee Titans on Wednesday and then you back it up with how the deal went together and the quotes about it. But when you go to a Facebook feed story because they're trying to keep your eyeballs on their website for as long as possible, they'll lead you in with. You'll never guess what happened when the Titans tried to do such and such. And then you go to the story and you don't even know that they signed this guy until like 18 paragraphs in, because they want you to stay on the website.
David:So that is where the terrible nature of what news has become affected by social media. The goal is to keep you locked in and reading and viewing what they're putting out there, and they're not going to tell you on the front end what's going on. In fact, how many times have you read one of those things? You were completely disappointed because you're like this is not a big deal at all, it's just okay, whoop-dee-doo, and you're like, well, that's what clickbait is for, because when you click on that thing and then those advertisers get those impressions and then they can go sell that it's all a big business thing. And I wish it wasn't, but it always has been that way. The business model is the advertiser. The advertisers buy ads based upon the reach and the viewership and the readership and they're doing everything that they can to maintain and grow reach, readership and viewership.
Josh:You're absolutely right and you know, nowadays even you and I have our podcast and people get their news from all these different podcasts and you know it's just really very sad. I think it can really change the way that you look at your friends, your family members, other people, in a way that it's like are they on my side or are they not on my side, or whose side are they on? Or it's kind of like you already have these preconceived ideas and you just don't know where to get your news from, and I wish we just get back to the old newspaper and the beauty of what the newspaper brought.
David:And again, I'm a newspaper evangelist. You know that. I mean I own two of them. But when you have to pay for ink and paper you get a little bit more concerned with what you're putting on that ink and paper. Right, yeah, you can't just blather on for 4,000 words because you simply don't have the space to do so, because you have to pay for ink and paper.
David:So I believe that newspapers by and large not everyone, obviously, but newspapers by and large try to be as middle of the road in their reporting as they can be. But that wasn't even always the case. If you really think about it. It's really fun to go back and look at old newspapers, like from the Civil War era, and see how truly biased they were, because if you were in the South, they were talking about how the North was being aggressive and trying to take away states' rights, and it's like on the front page of every little newspaper that was printed down there. You go to the North of the Mason-Dixon line and it's the exact opposite we're trying to abolish slavery. So there's always been bias in news. I just think it's so more prevalent and in your face because we are on devices 24-7. I mean, I don't know about you. The doctor can tell me all day long not to pick up my phone, or look at my phone right before I go to bed, or pick up my phone first thing in the morning. But guess what I'm going to do? As soon as I roll out of bed, I'm going to pick up that phone and look at it, and so that's where we are and I'm going to tell you.
David:I believe that there's something to be said for professional journalists. Everybody and their mama thinks they're journalists. I'll start a blog and we'll tell the real story behind this, that and the other. Your real story is somebody else's complete fabrication. So to me, you lean on the professional journalists and generally what I would say is newspaper journalists, but then fact check, go see if what they said lines up. It's kind of like checking your preacher right. You know he may say there's something in the Bible, but unless you've seen it there with your own two eyes, you know what does it say Trust but verify. I think that's probably a pretty good approach when it comes to news media.
Josh:I think it was Ronald Reagan that said that, yeah, and so I think you have so many things that are going on too, and I think you have top stories right now. I would say you got Russia and Ukraine, you have China and Taiwan, you have Iran, you have North Korea, you have Israel and Hamas, you have inflation in the United States, you have Congress. I mean there's just so many things, and probably my biggest thing is Russia and Ukraine. What is the real news? What is not the real news? China and Taiwan what's the real news? What's not the real news?
Josh:On TikTok, everything pushing towards pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian, all these tens of thousands of protests, and that's all you get from.
Josh:Tiktok is one side, but then it's like where do you get our younger generation gets their news from? It's kind of like, um, let's talk about this some more, but then a lot of people don't really want to sit down and talk, and this is what's happening, and if someone says something, it has to be the truth. If it's on talk, it has to be the truth, and it's just not necessarily. I mean, let's talk about this, let's have some discussion, and I think it's having to have an open mind, being able to say, you know what, I'm going to look at this from all angles and I'm going to do my research. I'm going to, yes, see what's on my social media feed, but maybe it's a liberal source. I'm going to check it with more of a conservative source and if it's a conservative source, I'm going to check it on another source and kind of see what's in the middle, because it's so important to know what's happening and a lot of people don't even know what they're talking about.
David:Well, I know, let's take the news of today, for instance. I don't know when the podcast will go out, but this morning the lead story was the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Yes, so the facts are that, as we know them so far and I haven't looked at news since this morning a cargo ship hit the bridge. The bridge collapsed. It was about 1.30 in the morning and there were up to 20-something people on the bridge in their cars that went into the harbor. Those are the facts. But I guarantee you, depending on what source you're looking at, there'll be a different take on those facts. Like cargo ship hits bridge, was it a terrorist attack? Or you know fails? Why wasn't it shored up to be able to handle an accident? Or when was the last time the bridge was inspected? I mean, these are all suppositions added to the facts to play to an audience. Remember, the facts are the same. The fact is a ship hit a bridge at about 1.30 in the morning. The whole bridge collapsed. We know this. But how we frame it then affects, and here's the thing that I think.
David:Now I may be wrong. There may be some controller or somebody out there that's controlling the feed. I don't know, but I will say this from my business standpoint the algorithm's job is to keep you on the social media platform. So typically not always, but typically you will see in your feed things you agree with because they want you to stay on there. So, yeah, not always Again. I see stuff on my reels and TikTok Most of the time. Not always Again. I see stuff on my reels and TikTok. Most of the time it's voices that are somewhat in alignment with me politically. Yeah, exactly To me. That's the rub, right. Nobody hears the other side because they're never shown. The other side.
David:I have a reporter I guess he's almost 30 now but when I was working in the newspaper on site prior to COVID, he and I would have these long, lengthy discussions. He was a liberal's liberal, I mean, he was Bernie Sanders liberal and I'm not. I'm Ronald Reagan conservative, at least in my political views. I'm a realist. But if you ask me what my political leanings are, that's that. And we would have wonderful discussions because we got to understand that it was about the issue or the topic, not the person. If I said, well, there's some things that Donald Trump did that I liked, he wouldn't go oh, you evil person, and I would press him on some questions and we had the mutual respect to say even if we disagree, at least we're opening ourselves up to try to understand the position of the other person. Yeah, I think that is what is really lacking in our world today, because we've been so fed the things that we agree with that when somebody dares to have a different opinion, we paint them as an evil person rather than a disagreeable subject.
Josh:Yeah, that's true, that is so true. Well, that's just kind of really been heavy on my mind. I want to get David on here and talk with me about it, and I'm so thankful that you're able to just talk through this and you know, I've got a lot of friends, conservative and liberal leaning and to be able to have a conversation, and I think they also. The other key, too, is that they know that your intention and the intent is not anything but good, and you also got to be able to say you know what I see your point of view, I see your point of view, and so thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. For those of you that are listening, this is definitely a challenge to check your news sources and, dave, what's your podcast?
David:So the name of the podcast is ¨Keep This In Mind.¨ I talk about mindset issues. I bring guests on the podcast and have them talk about identity, mindset, thought process. I'm not a neurologist or neuroscientist of any kind, but I do know that you have to go in the mind before you can go in the body, and so we try to help people with that. Follow me on all my social media platforms at David A. Specht and, of course, my website's, davidaspecht. com. That's S-P-E-C-H-T and yeah, I cover all kinds of crazy things. I mean, somebody asked me the other day what do you do.
Josh:Well, for everyone that's listening, I want to thank you so much for tuning in to the Joshua Rosales Speaks Out Podcast. I want to thank our sponsor, Heyroofman. com, for all your roofing needs, from minor repairs to full roof replacement. Heyroofman. com has you covered. Call today for a free estimate at 615-945-1492. That's 615-945-1492. Once again, that is 615-945-1492 or go to Heyroofmancom. Thank you, David, again for coming on. I really enjoyed it and hopefully people can be challenged to really fact check and look at other different news sources to really make good analysis and good decision making. Absolutely Thank you for having me.
