Question Everything with Brian Reed

Great podcast. Great storytelling and great questions. Can’t wait for more episodes.

I was so excited to hear about a new project from Brian Reed. S-town was a masterpiece and the Trojan Horse Affair was so great. This one is a flop! This whole project is a treatise about the state of journalism in America from someone who clearly is not willing to accept any criticisms of journalism. The whole thing is about how journalists are being unfairly represented, and that the criticism of journalists is part of a conspiracy by Trump to limit the first amendment? In the most recent episode where they talk with the Christian MMA guy from Wyoming… they don’t listen to him at all. They approach him as a sample of the American people, and his hesitant feelings about the current news media as a problem. This podcast comes so close to something real. The issue is that you guys see the attitudes of Americans as the problem, and you are too loyal to the journalism you say that you are exploring. I think Reed and his partners may just be too close to it to do the premise of the show justice. Or perhaps the podcast has just been released too quickly- You should have worked harder to decide what it was you wanted to tell us. I expected to hear a refreshing perspective on how journalists can do a better job at not sensationalizing for business purposes, focus on reporting on what matters, and reporting it straight, conflicts of interest from wealthy owners of newspapers like Bezos and TWP, history of yellow journalism in the press and evolved to today, introduction of the 24 hour news cycle and the advent of partisan cable news channels, online echo chambers and radicalization, the recent failure of polls to predict election outcomes, on and on! What about websites like brietbart and the daily wire, do they not employ people who call themselves journalists? What say you about their ethics and their integrity to the truth? You will never reach the people you want to reach this way, the people who are suspicious of and frustrated by the media. So far, this podcast has left a bad taste in my mouth (me, a die hard progressive, a long time devoted NPR listener, and a person who agrees with you about all of this! ) I expected you to be using journalism to investigate the state of journalism, but it seems to me you’re participating in the same issues that you’re meant to be uncovering.

I wish I could have shared this podcast with others a long time ago.

Thank you for a conversation that everyone should put into practice in their own lives. The media we listen to, read, or watch should not be trying to change our minds or reinforce our beliefs but instead should encourage us to think. Question Everything is just the start to a much bigger conversation that needs to happen in the United States.