Media Under the Influence

That Solo Life, Episode 307: Media Under the Influence

Transcribing live conversations can be tricky so please be forgiving of any typos or errors that you find. Love something here and want to share? Great, please read the notes at the end. Enjoy!

Michelle Kane (00:12):
Hello, and thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life. I am Michelle Kane of Voice Matters, and I'm here as ever with my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hey Karen, here we are again.
Karen Swim, APR (00:26):
Hi, Michelle. Yes, we are here, and I hope our audience is thrilled about that.
Michelle Kane (00:33):
Absolutely. You know what? We make it right. We're a good reason to want Mondays to come around, right? With each new episode drop.
Karen Swim, APR (00:43):
That's okay. We hope so. And all of you Monday can sometimes be a little rough, so we understand, and we hope to just inject a little bit of information, maybe some laughters and giggles for you on any given Monday morning or whatever day you listen
Michelle Kane (01:01):
To. Yeah, whenever you're listening. It's all good. It's all good. But yeah, today we're going to talk about media under the influence. That sounds a little fun, not quite as fun as it sounds.
Karen Swim, APR (01:12):
That sounds juicy, Michelle.
Michelle Kane (01:16):
We're not talking about drunk news anchors, although I'm sure they're out there. No, just kind of Well, the current tone, right? Yes. Here in the States, the tone is increasingly so that large media entities appear to be caving to the current administration. You've got ABC settling a major lawsuit, CBS now kowtowing, and the general vibe that Stephen Colbert and the Colbert Show are paying the price for that with the announcement that his show is going to end in May of 2026. And that announcement came two days after he and his monologue accused his network of basically bribing the administration with their settlements as is his constitutional First Amendment. So here we are,
Karen Swim, APR (02:14):
Right? Yeah. And I think that this is an important topic because as we all know, the media is so integral to public relations, but it also is so critical to continue a free democracy. So, I don't care about the political parties that dominate the current administration. I do care about government having this role of being able to sue media companies and to be able to pressure those who provide us with information. I am so afraid we're losing local journalists and there's the pressure by power, so by suing, by taking people to court. But there's also the pressure by funding for some organizations taking away money so that they cannot exist. And I mean, it's a very scary trend that I almost feel like we've let this genie out of the bottle and it's not going to get put back in. And I want to be clear that I believe that the press should be free.
(03:37):
It's not a political tool. It's not a tool for PR people in our little corner of the world. We know that journalists do not work for us. They are not an extension of our PR team or an extension of our marketing team. It's beautiful when we can support the stories that they're telling. And I feel that same way about journalism. We rely on free and fair journalism to tell the entire story. So, I do not think that Democrats, republicans, independents, green Party, whatever political party should ever have influence over a free and democratic press period. And when it comes to entertainment, I also believe, like you said, constitutional right. We should welcome voices that agree, disagree, lampoons, spoof. Those are all things that are so critical to American society. And it's sad to me that we're seeing this terrible trend.
Michelle Kane (04:42):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think back to the founding of our nation, it was the assertion of a free press even before we had the First Amendment guaranteeing that right as a nation, we have the Thomas Paynes, Benjamin Franklin, under all his monikers of not just truth telling, also satire. I mean, hop across the pond. Jonathan Swift, his whole essay about, well, I won't go into it, it's a little delicate, but Google, Jonathan Swift in Ireland, and it is a powerful tool to keep your government in check. It's the way that we do maintain our free society. And to see anyone going after it is highly disturbing. I hate to use the disturbing, it sounds so complacent, but we should all be on high alert that this is even allowed to happen. I agree. We're suing a news organization not because of slander, not because of liable, but somehow these lawsuits are somehow sticking. Or honestly, the fact that the news entities, which let's face it, over the years, the more and more they became profit centers within other aspects of the parent company, the less the integrity of the news division was considered. So that's part of it. The more that they just kowtow, the worse it's going to get.
Karen Swim, APR (06:24):
Well, and I would encourage anyone who wants to dig deeper into this topic to start with history and look at how authoritarian societies arise, this is a step in that direction. And so, I know that there are people that have sounded this alarm and some people dismissed it as political rhetoric. But let's be factual and say none of us, not one single citizen of this country should be okay with this trend. Because when people in government tell you what you can say, the words that you can use, who you can watch and read, by exerting that control, it's taking away your choice and it's taking away your access to balanced information. I belong to a political party, but I do not, I read a lot of things and I tap into a lot of information because I'm also like our audience, our smart savvy audience.
(07:34):
We're thinkers. We like to analyze and come to opinions on our own. And I think that for most of us, that means that none of us agrees 100% with any political party. We are smart enough to know that you can vote a certain way, but still like things about the opposing party and that you actually want that opposing party because that's what keeps our society in check those checks and balances of having disagreement, not violence, not murder, not rhetoric, not misinformation, but true agreement that is the spirit of this nation. I welcome that. We've lost that too. That's not what we're talking about in today's
Michelle Kane (08:18):
Episode. We'll say that for another day. But it it's true. And the fact that someone who's considered a comedian is among the first to feel the effects of this, you might think, ah, I've got other late shows to watch. No, that's danger as well when they come for the comics. Because if you really think about it, our comedians are our frontline of pushing envelope of what we can do or say, ask Kathy Griffin what she went through. She hired a very powerful First Amendment lawyer. I forget who he defended in the past, but she did not violate any laws distasteful, as you may think, what she did. But you need to be able to express yourself in a free country. Otherwise, what are we, I mean, I don't know. I'm Gen X. Growing up in the eighties, you learned about the Russian news organization tasks and how that was basically a mouthpiece for the leadership.
(09:24):
And boy, were we just so naive and arrogant back then to think, oh, I don't ever happen here. It's dumb. And now here we are. People my age are like, yeah, that's fine. I don't care. I agree. It's like, no, you have to care. And like you say, we don't have to agree. No one's going to agree a hundred percent on anything and everything. And I'm also a firm believer in our government that, and I think that's also partly why we're here, that purity, if you do vote for someone in a certain party, that you expect a hundred percent purity of beliefs. No, we have to work together to come to consensus. So no one candidate, no one party is ever going to get everything they want. That's just not how things work amongst us humans. But I think especially we who are professional communicators and our PR industry, who we are based in credibility and truth, we need to be vocal about protecting it.
Karen Swim, APR (10:29):
Hi Michelle. I could not agree more. I think that we have a responsibility, and I think that this is a place where we can link arms and say, you know what? We need a free press period. It's just non-negotiable, and we're going to raise our voices individually in unison. Some of that may start in our local communities of being more active in ensuring that we are leading the way and supporting organizations that are fighting to keep that. We didn't mention this yet, but Muck Rock did a study of local journalists, and I believe that it was done in collaboration with another organization. We'll include a link in our show notes, but they showed where there is a desert, a local journalist, and it's heartbreaking. My county was one of the ones where we are lacking. We are at the top of the list of the bottom.
(11:24):
And that's a good place to be. And I think about that in not just big world picture ways, but in small ways that really do impact you and your neighbors. Where do you go these days to find out about school boards, local ordinances, local events when local journalists are gone, the local journalist, I don't know if you all still follow any local papers anywhere, but those are the journalists that I always think are the Hardnosed investigative reporters that are out there. So you get some of the best deep dive stories from those local reporters, and they are a dying breed. And so support them. Buy the paper, subscribe. Let your voice be heard. Educate in the forums that you're in, in your community groups in your neighborhood to help other people to understand why this is such an important part of our society. And this is not an older generation raising our fist and saying, we want our print papers. This is us saying that together. We know the importance of this and we have to elevate our voices to help the rest of the world or the rest of our country to see that too, so that we can fight together to preserve this.
Michelle Kane (12:57):
Yeah, agree, agree. I know in my very local community, we've got one guy, one guy, and he can't cover everything. And it's kind of cool to mock your local paper. Who reads it? Well, all the people who tell me after a community event, well, I didn't know about it. Well, that's because your local community Facebook group, hate to tell you, doesn't replace the news. And we can plaster these events on all the Facebook groups. We can use the event listings, we can do all the digital things and hang a few signs around, but that doesn't replace the value of getting a front page story about your event in the paper.
Karen Swim, APR (13:38):
And I mean, by the way, when you pick up a local paper, the algorithm is not going to shift on you. So you control the information. You can pick, print a piece of paper. I love our little local newspaper. I read it and I can choose which stories I want to read, but I can flip the pages on my own. I don't have social media telling me that's not important to you. Hey, you didn't engage with this. Or mixing things up and putting it out of sequence. So that is another fight, especially as we're all trying to protect our mental health and combat information overload. Hey, a paper is a good way to do that because it doesn't overwhelm you in the same way, and it doesn't throw in a reel in an ad. It's just, it's the paper. And you can flip through it and you can read it at your leisure and nobody's screaming at you. And by the way, no comments, which is beautiful.
Michelle Kane (14:35):
It's a beautiful thing. Well, we hope we've given you a little inspiration today and we know that we are all fighting the good fight out there as PR pros. If you did get value out of today's episode, please share it around. Give us some reviews, hit us up at solopro.com. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

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