On the Media

Conspiracy theories and disinformation have found a home on right-wing talk radio, where falsehoods often escape scrutiny from regulators and fact-checkers. On this week’s On the Media, hear how one Christian radio network grew a gargantuan audience and served up the Big Lie. Plus, a look at how the rise in LGBTQ hate online is connected to the deadly shooting in Colorado.

1. Jo Yurcaba [@JoYurcaba], a journalist focused on LGBTQ+ issues for NBC News, on how anti-trans rhetoric contributed to increasing fears in the queer community in the days leading up to the shooting in Colorado Springs. Plus, Sophie Bjork-James [@sbjorkjames], Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University, on the impact of religious fundamentalism in supporting ant-LGBTQ+ talking points. Listen.

2. Journalist Katie Thornton, host of "The Divided Dial," on the how right-wing talk radio embraced election lies. Part 1 & Part 2.

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In television's younger days, going live was extremely difficult, costly and rare. But in November of 1963 a monumental tragedy made live coverage essential, no matter the cost, whenever a president left the White House. WNYC’s Sara Fishko recollects those dreadful days in November when everyone was paralyzed in front of the small screen.  

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Episode 2: From Pulpit to Politics

How did the little-known Salem Media Group come to have an outsized political influence? In this episode we trace the company’s rise to power from its scrappy start in the 1970s to the present day — a growth that paralleled and eventually became inextricable from the growth of the Religious Right. We learn that Salem is tightly networked with right wing political strategists, pollsters, big donors, far right leaders and Republican party mainstays thanks to their involvement with the Council for National Policy — a secretive group of Evangelical and conservative leaders. For decades, the CNP has been working behind the scenes to get a specific, highly influential subset of voters to act. And Salem has been a megaphone for their cause.

Episode 2: From Pulpit to Politics

How did the little-known Salem Media Group come to have an outsized political influence? In this episode we trace the company’s rise to power from its scrappy start in the 1970s to the present day — a growth that paralleled and eventually became inextricable from the growth of the Religious Right. We learn that Salem is tightly networked with right wing political strategists, pollsters, big donors, far right leaders and Republican party mainstays thanks to their involvement with the Council for National Policy — a secretive group of Evangelical and conservative leaders. For decades, the CNP has been working behind the scenes to get a specific, highly influential subset of voters to act. And Salem has been a megaphone for their cause.

The Divided Dial was edited by On the Media's executive producer, Katya Rogers. With production support from Max Balton and fact-checking by Tom Colligan, Sona Avakian, and Graham Hacia. Music and sound design by Jared Paul. Jennifer Munson is our technical director. Art by Michael Brennan.

With support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, there has been nothing short of crisis — leading to massive layoffs and lost advertisers. On this week’s On the Media, what this chaos means for activists worldwide who used the platform as a public square. Plus, how political predictions distort coverage of elections. 

1. James Fallows [@JamesFallows], writer of the “Breaking the News” newsletter on Substack, on the political press' obsession with telling the future and the narratives that have a chokehold on elections coverage. Listen.

2. Zoë Schiffer [@ZoeSchiffer], Managing Editor of Platformer, on the mass exodus of employees from one of the world's most significant social media sites. Listen.

3. Avi Asher-Schapiro [@AASchapiro], tech reporter for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, on the impact of Musk's leadership on Twitter users around the world. Listen.

4. Clive Thompson [@pomeranian99], journalist and author of Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World, on the website many are fleeing to amid chaos at Twitter. Listen.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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In the wake of the five alarm fire at Twitter, a small, quiet social media alternative has been quietly attracting the tweeting weary. Mastodon, named for the prehistoric elephant relatives, was originally created by a German programmer named Eugen Rochko in 2016. And even though it shares similarities to its blue bird peer, the two platforms possess many differences. For one, Mastodon is organized by groups called "servers" or "instances," there's no universal experience like on Twitter. It's also completely decentralized — each server is run by individuals or small groups — with no overseeing company. But is it here to stay? This week, Brooke sits down with Clive Thompson, a tech journalist and author of the book Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World, to talk about why people like Mastodon, who it's for, and why we should watch its latest evolution.

You can find Clive Thompson on Mastodon at @[email protected] and OTM by searching @[email protected].

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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Episode 1: The True Believers

In 2016, Christian talk radio host Eric Metaxas begrudgingly encouraged his listeners to vote for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. By 2020, he pledged his life to fighting the “stolen election” while talking with Trump on the air. Ahead of the midterm elections, Metaxas and many of his fellow talk radio hosts made sure the falsehood of massive 2020 election fraud was top of mind — on the airwaves and beyond. And while election-denying candidates didn't do as well as many on the right had hoped, at least 170 such candidates have been elected to state and national offices, some of whom will be in charge of future elections. We meet the company whose hosts never backed down from the lies of the stolen 2020 election: Salem Media Group, the largest Christian, conservative multimedia company in the country – and perhaps the most influential media company you’ve never heard of.

The Divided Dial was edited by On the Media's executive producer, Katya Rogers. With production support from Max Balton and fact-checking by Tom Colligan, Sona Avakian, and Graham Hacia. Music and sound design by Jared Paul. Jennifer Munson is our technical director. Art by Michael Brennan.

With support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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Across the county, librarians are fighting to keep libraries open and books on the shelves. On this week’s show, hear what the American Library Association is doing to stand up to unprecedented challenges, and what a suit against the Internet Archive could mean for the future of e-books. Plus, how the legend of the ancient Library of Alexandria continues to inspire utopian projects today.

1. Emily Drabinski [@edrabinski], incoming President of the American Library Association, on the greatest threats to libraries today, and how to fight them. Listen.

2. Nitish Pahwa [@pahwa_nitish], web editor at Slate, on how a lawsuit against the Internet Archive could affect how libraries lend out e-books for good. Listen.

2. Molly Schwartz [@mollyfication], OTM producer, takes us inside the quest for a "universal library," from the Library of Alexandria to today. Listen.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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Jess deCourcy Hinds is the solo librarian at the Bard High School, Early College library in Queens, New York. In 2010, she received a new order of books about the civil rights movement, but Hinds noticed something strange: all of the books had Dewey Decimal numbers in the 300s, meaning they were supposed to be shelved in the social sciences section. She thought that some of the books belonged in the 900s, the history section. Like books on President Obama. Because texts about the 44th President were classified as social science, he would be separated from all the other books about U.S. presidents in her library. It seemed like part of a trend. "When it came to the LGBTQ books, and the women's history books, and books on immigrant history, all of those were in the 300s as well," says Hinds. So she and her students decided to rebel, to put books about President Obama into the history section: "we just started moving them."

The Dewey Decimal Classification System is a method that dates back to 1876 and is used by most libraries around the world. The second most popular system, the Library of Congress Classification System, was published in the early 1900s and based on the organization of Thomas Jefferson's personal library. These systems help patrons find books on the shelves and facilitate resource-sharing between libraries. But they also encode bias into the structure of libraries. To understand what that means for our current collections, On the Media producer Molly Schwartz spoke with Wayne A. Wiegand, a library historian and author of Irrepressible Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey, Caroline Saccucci, former Dewey Program Manager at the Library of Congress, Emily Drabinski interim chief librarian of the Mina Rees Library at CUNY, and Dartmouth librarian Jill Baron from the documentary Change the Subject.  

This segment originally aired in our September 3, 2021 program, Organizing Chaos. 

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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As the midterms approach, conspiracy theories about election fraud are shaping some races. On this week’s On the Media, a deep dive into the impact of the Big Lie on local elections, and the people who run them. Plus, how misinformation about the attack on Paul Pelosi spread like wildfire.

1. Angelo Carusone [@GoAngelo], President and CEO of Media Matters, on how conspiracy theories around the attack on Paul Pelosi spread all the way up to Fox News. Listen.

2. OTM Correspondent Micah Loewinger[@MicahLoewinger] traveled to Georgia to speak to activists who are challenging peoples' right to vote, those who've been challenged, and election workers caught in the crosshairs of conspiracy theories about election fraud in Georgia. Listen.

3. OTM correspondent Micah Loewinger [@MicahLoewinger] traveled to Georgia to talk with Anne Dover, a Republican in charge of elections in one of Atlanta's most conservative areas, about how her role has changed since the rise of the Big Lie, and what she's doing to stand up to it. Listen. 

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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