Trust in the media is near an all-time low, and news without a strong liberal bent is hard to come by. The Republic Sentinel, a conservative national news outlet, hopes to change that by reporting honestly on the news other publications don't want you to know about.
The Sentinel's editor-in-chief, Ben Zeisloft, joined "1819 News: The Podcast" last week to discuss the future of journalism and how to revive the muckraking spirit of old.
Zeisloft, formerly of The Daily Wire, said the belief that mainstream journalism serves as a quasi-leftist propaganda arm of the Democrat party is partially self-fulfilling since conservative Christians have largely abandoned the field.
"We look at the big glob of the legacy media and we see the revolving door between them and every other leftist institution basically and we say that's just the lefty field," he said. "It's almost that retreatism where we say this is given over to leftists. There's nothing more we can do. But I think you and I would agree that it's time to build new institutions, and that requires people who are able to fill those institutions and fill those slots. So in my experience, anybody who enjoys writing is good at writing and has subject matter expertise can be an excellent journalist."
Zeisoft said that too often, even news outlets considered right-of-center repeat the party line instead of pushing back and investigating the matter themselves.
"That's clearly obvious on the left, where you see the NBC and CBS and CNN, they just parrot whatever the Biden administration puts out. Those are the talking points. They're not going to question it," he said. "But I think to a larger extent, you see that even in conservative news outlets."
He gave the example of conservatives latching onto what pro-life organizations tell them as the best policy instead of asking how it could be better.
"Is this strategy to end abortion actually politically effective? Can we go further? So I think that that spirit, that lack of a muck-wracking spirit is on both sides," he said. "... It's just in the cultural water right now. It's just trusting whatever the people with the PhDs tell us and the people who are in the big institutions tell us."
The Sentinel recently broke a story about Captain Bradley Geary, a Navy SEAL BUD/S instructor who was blamed for the death of a trainee, Kyle Muleen, during Hell Week. Their reporters uncovered that steroid use was involved in the cadet's death despite the Navy's public statements to the contrary.
"It was actually the bequest of Kyle Mullen's mother who didn't want them to say that performance-enhancing drugs were at play here," he said. "So basically blatant dishonesty from the Navy, and we have a Christian man of integrity, Bradley Geary, who's getting pinned with it. So we're trying to cover that story as it develops."
To connect with the story's author or comment, email daniel.taylor@1819news.com or find him on Twitter and Facebook.
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