In a special video edition of The Journal, WSJ's Ryan Knutson sits down with Ben Shapiro of The Ben Shapiro Show and Preet Bharara of Stay Tuned with Preet in the Spotify mobile studio in Washington DC. We discuss how new media has shaped politics and how politics has shaped a new era of media. Further Listening: Corporate America’s Embrace of Trump 2.0 The End of Facebook’s Content Moderation Era Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the significance of the 2024 election being dubbed the 'podcast election'?
I mean, I can take this first. I think it played a huge role. I mean, it granted access to, for President Trump, places that he wouldn't have been able to reach before through legacy media without the same sort of filter. I think it was a big mistake for Kamala Harris not to take advantage of that a little bit more.
Obviously, it was very controversial when she decided that she was going to have a negotiation with Joe Rogan and Rogan wasn't going to have her on, then he was going to have her on, then he wasn't going to have her on. I think that President Trump actually broke through a lot of perceptions about him as a person because in
a long form podcast, you get the opportunity to sort of delve into what people are more. You get past the surface very often. And for President Trump, I think that was a really, really big thing. Plus, of course, the audience for podcasts is significantly younger than the audience for traditional media. So if you're talking about legacy media, legacy media is
If you're talking cable TV, it's probably 50 and up largely at this point. And if you're talking about the podcast industry, it's largely 40 and under.
Chapter 2: How did podcasts shape voter perceptions of Trump and Harris?
And so I think that one of the big shifts in this election was how younger voters actually moved toward President Trump a marked number largely because they were exposed to him in a way that they hadn't been through kind of the short clips and the political framing.
And I think a lot of the things that people like about President Trump tend to be more personal and culture-driven in a way that I think benefited him a lot in this election cycle.
Mm-hmm. Preet, did you listen to Trump on any of his podcasts? I listened to portions of it.
So I'd like to say we have a moment of agreement on the eve of a new administration. Ben Shapiro and Preet Bharara agree about the power of podcasts. It's not new. We didn't have Kamala Harris or Donald Trump on our podcast this past season. Did you try to get them on? we tried to get one of those two on. I figured one of them would have been futile, and it turns out both were futile.
So Joe Rogan and I are bonded forever in that same regard. Kamala Harris wouldn't come on either one of our podcasts, I think probably for similar reasons.
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Chapter 3: What role did authenticity play in podcasting during the election?
No, that was just text and timing. You wanted her for three hours.
I don't know. But back in 2020, We had a number of the Democratic primary candidates, Pete Buttigieg notably, went on a number of podcasts and obviously, as everyone knows, goes on media that does not necessarily associate itself with the liberal cause.
I agree with Ben also that the intimacy of podcasts, the relationship that people have with the podcast host, whether it's Ben or me or you or anyone else, translates into, I think, a greater intensity of feeling and listenership Not just with the host, but whoever their guest is. And in the long form, particularly in the very, very long form, it's hard to bullshit who you are.
Pretty much anybody can do it, whether they have half a brain or not. No offense to the legacy media on cable, but for six minutes or four minutes, if you're on a panel with other people, or three minutes, You can pretty much get away with pretending to say what you think you mean, but your staff is giving you talking points on.
You can't do that if you're an hour with Ben, and hopefully you can't do that if you're an hour with me. And I think it gives people a better sense of who the candidate is. And if the candidate is good and allies with what the listenership, putative voters... You want to hear from a candidate about authenticity and their policy positions. Well, then that's very good.
If you're not, then you can go in the other direction.
Ben, when you had Donald Trump on your show, what were you hoping to get out of that conversation?
So the truth is I'd seen President Trump. the prior week. So on October 7th, he and I went to the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and I brought along a hostage family that has a child who's an American citizen who's still hostage in Gaza. And so we were sort of recapitulating what that was like. I wanted to talk to him about that.
I wanted to talk about, you know, that was, I think, two weeks before the end of the campaign. So what the campaign was going to include, it was a shorter podcast for what it was. It was about a minute interview. If I'd had him there for three hours, we would have talked a lot more, I'm sure, about what it is like to be on the campaign trail. What are his deeper thoughts on issues like trade?
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Chapter 4: Why have conservatives excelled in the podcast space?
And I wonder what you think of this, either or both of you. A good friend once told me who was a high-ranking person at Fox News. He says, the thing you got to remember about Fox News and conservative outlets is They make money and have listenership and viewership when there's a Republican in the White House because they get cheerleading.
And they get listenership and viewership when there's a Democrat in the White House because they're in opposition. And contrary to that, on the left, it seems that they get a lot of listenership and viewership when there's opposition, when there's Trump or someone like Trump in the White House. And then when they have their own guy in the White House, they kind of take it easy and they go camping.
I'm curious to get your take on the media landscape as it's evolving. It seems like the most prominent voices that are forming is on the right, on the left, there's sort of these two echo chambers. People are in that for their algorithms, you know, the sort of fed information that they are more likely to believe in.
And a traditional media that tries to position itself as more neutral in the center is shrinking in its influence. What do you think that means for our national discourse?
So I think that there's a little bit too much worry over this. I think that there's a lot of talk about, oh, the legacy media, which was seeking an objective middle. I think the reason that our industry exploded is because everybody didn't believe them. We all thought they were full of it. And when I watched MSNBC or just ABC News or 60 Minutes.
I can identify the bias immediately in one particular direction, and I don't think that they're trying to be particularly objective. I think they live in their own little echo chamber. I think the thing about podcasting that's weird and what's interesting and strange and cool about the industry is that the spectrum of views is really broad. Where do you peg Joe Rogan? Where's Joe?
I mean, he endorsed Trump. He's also endorsed the economic plans of Bernie Sanders in the past. He's somebody who's very pro-ayahuasca, but he's also very anti-crime. He's kind of all over the place on the ideological maps. Where do you place him?
For me, I would consider myself a pretty strict, down-the-line conservative, but conservatism has shifted definitions so many times at this point that on some points I'm now heterodox. I'm a free trader, for example, in a party that seems to be significantly more friendly to tariffs. This sort of kind of ideological diversity does exist, and you're starting to see it, I would hope, on the left.
I think one of the things that the left needs to do if they do wish to have a Joe Rogan is they actually need to allow perspectives that live outside of the sort of Nancy Pelosi wing of the Democratic Party. There needs to – like – Some of my friends – I won't mention their names because then it will get them on Trumbull and left because that's the way this works.
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Chapter 5: How can the left adapt to succeed in podcasting?
There's two things that I think on the liberal side, the Democratic side, and maybe some of this is relevant to the conservative side. But A, liberal hosts or center-left hosts or whatever you want to call them should not be excoriated for bringing on people who are on the opposite side of the aisle.
And I think on the part of some platforms, there is a worry that if I bring so-and-so on, are people gonna be upset? Are they gonna cancel their subscriptions, et cetera? And also, For people who are on the left side, to go on programs, to go on podcasts where the hosts are very, very different. I mentioned Pete Buttigieg once. I'll mention him a second time. He does it with respect to Fox News.
I believe he does it with podcasts also. We tried to get Pete on.
I will say, when he was running for president, we really tried very hard to get him on because I thought he was really more fascinating at the time than he is now.
It's too bad that he didn't get on. He's a smart guy. But there should be an openness. on the part of everyone on every side to have people from the other side or whatever that means, you know, the adjacent sides to come on and hear people out. But you sometimes see on social media, as soon as, you know, this podcast host has this person on, why are you platforming that person?
Well, that's how we get stuck in our silos. Did you try to get Kamala Harris on your show as well?
Did we? Actually, we did. Okay, so my producer, my executive producer, we did issue an invite. I mean, if she wasn't going to go on pre, she definitely wasn't going to go on my show. That's for sure.
I think in her case, it was, I think it was, they made, I don't know, I'm not part of the campaign, I wasn't part of the campaign. They made a determination about use of time, which we can all second guess now. I don't know that it was necessarily in every case.
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Chapter 6: What is the future of traditional media in relation to podcasts?
I mean, I think they made a determination about her inability to speak off the cuff in any sort of convincing and coherent way. And you saw that evidence even in interviews with mainstream media outlets where she had a producer sitting over somebody's shoulder being like, looks like time's up. We got to run.
What do you see as your role in the media landscape? I mean –
Well, I mean for me, I'm a conservative. I got in this because I want to convince people of my point of view. I mean I've never been dishonest about that. I say that openly. I've said that consistently. And what's funny is that then you'll have news guard or fact checkers be like, well, you said this because you're conservative. I'm like that's not – you're not – that's not a gotcha.
I say that I'm conservative. Of course I'm saying it from a conservative perspective. With that said, I think one of the best ways for me to defend my conservatism is to put it up against different ideas and then ask questions of those ideas. And sometimes there may be kind of weird crossovers. That does happen from time to time. And at other times, there's not a crossover.
But in order for an ideology or any idea to really be interesting, you have to put it up against some sort of contrast.
Can I just say what my goal is? So I'm not quite a political podcaster. My podcast was born of my experience. Mm-hmm. And when I began podcasting in the fall of 2017, there was lots of legal news. There was a lot of news about the Mueller investigation, and I knew something about that, and it was in my wheelhouse.
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Chapter 7: How does ideological diversity impact podcasting?
That has expanded over time to cover politics and policy issues and all sorts of other things. But I try to be myself, which is I'm not enraged. I'm not trying to enrage other people and their podcasts that do that on the left and the right, but sort of assess as the best as I can. I have a point of view. I'm an opponent of Donald Trump, a critic of Donald Trump. I was a supporter of Joe Biden.
I was a supporter of Kamala Harris. I've always voted Democrat. I voted for – I worked for Senator Schumer. But I do, as Ben says he tries to do, look at an issue, whether it's a withdrawal from Afghanistan or a crime bill or a particular course of actions taken by the special counsel, you know, sort of calmly in an measured voice, not too quickly. make my point of view known.
And it's not always the point of view that other people have. It's just sort of be like a sane voice. Will I always get it right? Is my point of view the one to be taken as gospel? No, because I have a perspective and I have, you know, the kind of innate bias that everybody has. It has a perspective, but I try to call it as fair as I can see it. And I think and hope that,
for audience members who keep coming back and for those who want to check us out, that's what we bring. Not just sort of, you know, necessarily predictable views, but a calm, rational assessment of the things as we see them.
I want to ask about the economics of this new industry. The economics obviously have shaped everything. The economics of the traditional newspaper business, let's say, over the last, you know, in the 20th century was to have as wide of an audience as possible. That's led to in some ways the rise of objectivity because we're just neutral.
We're just telling the facts so that we can have as many eyeballs on our newspaper. We can get as big of advertising dollars as we can get. What are the economic incentives that push the industry in the way that it's forming now?
I mean I try not to be led in my viewpoint by the economic incentives. I do think that there are some negative economic incentives for being nuanced and interesting, meaning there's some quick and easy money to be made by saying – I'd say, inflammatory, conspiratorial things. I think that there's always a great audience for that.
And the thing is, the country's so big that you don't need that big a chunk of the American audience to have a really big audience, right? You can have hundreds of thousands or even millions of people watching you say crazy sh**. Because it's a really, really big country.
And so I think that there is an incentive to steer into some of that sort of stuff depending on sort of how the algorithms push it and people get very animated about that sort of thing. So if you want to talk about the JFK assassination every night, then you'll probably do big numbers. And that's something that I'm not willing to do.
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