• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 6, 2024

At a time when it seems much of the news media has become increasingly polarized, fragmented, and echo chamber-ish, one organization has been standing out for it's non-partisan, context- and fact-based approach to the issues: Hearst Media Production Group's "Matter of Fact with Soledad O'Brien," which recently kicked off its 10th season with a series of presidential election reports focusing on kitchen table issues influencing voters in the battleground states.

In the following conversation, veteran broadcast journalist Soledad O'Brien explains how the show's fact-based, non-partisan approach is helping to bring clarity and context to viewers, and boosting the show's ratings along the way.

Soledad O’Brien: We pretty quickly decided that we were going to center policy and how politics lands on actual people and fewer talking heads. We talk about the policy and the people on camera are the people who are directly affected by the policy, not lawmakers.

I think it is one of the reasons we have a very strong viewing audience in the middle of the country. We cover the middle of the country a lot. We cover why hospitals are closing in Ohio. We cover what is happening in Wisconsin. And we highlight the people who live there. If we’re going to talk about farming, we’re going to talk to a soybean farmer and get their point of view.

And this may sound strange, but it makes it less partisan, because you’re just giving someone’s experience and they’re not positioning themselves. They’re a farmer. This is what they do and they’re telling you the truth as they see it, because this is their life.

That became very helpful for us, because we could cover very diverse stories and cover the whole country without worrying about how much of it was spin or someone saying something in order to get across their messaging.

I think it ended up making the show very strong,

MediaPost: So is it fair to say you focus mostly on the kitchen table issues that actually matter to people.

O’Brien: We definitely don’t get into partisan debates, because I’m not sure that’s helpful for our audience. Sometimes, we just need to explain the issues. ‘What is the First Amendment? What is gerrymandering? How exactly does climate change affect farmers?’ And what are farmers saying about it? At the end of the day, these kitchen table issues all boil down to economics for everybody. It’s about what makes their lives sustainable.

MediaPost: But we’re living in such a confusing time in terms of fact-based information. I mean, right now, the economy by all objective measures is going great, yet the polling shows people feel worse off than they had been. How do you deal with that?

O’Brien: The key is to make sure you’re addressing all sides. I mean, obviously if you’re a person who just lost their job, or if you’re a person discovering that milk now costs $7 a gallon, you’re not going to feel great about it. I think you have to explain why people are feeling the way they do and what the implications of that are on an election, on a community and how people feel about policy.

You actually have to give people context and accurate information and then dive into why people feel the way they do.

I don’t think that’s difficult journalism. I think it’s lazy and sloppy to just say, “Oh, the sky is falling.” Or “Everything’s amazing and people feel great.”

We average four-and-a-half minutes for our pieces, so we can really get into things. We recently did a great piece on the dearth of local veterinarians and what the implications are for the food supply and what the government is doing about that. It’s challenging news, but it are solutions and real data about what’s going to happen to the people who rely on vets for their cattle or their pets, for their horses. You can cover all of that in a four-and-a-half minute piece. That’s our job.

MediaPost: The No. 1 news value for people always is consequence, but we live in such polarized times when misinformation can accelerate so quickly. How much of this is being amplified by social media?

O’Brien: I think there is a solution to that. I think people really want context. And I think we can really help de-polarize things when you explain the history of how we got here. And explain how people who are on one side, and the people on the other side of the issue think about it. And we don’t go to extremes by taking two crazy people on each side and letting them fight it out for five minutes.

MediaPost: You’ve kicked off your new season by focusing on the seven battleground states. What’s your goal? Is it to help inform voters in those states? Is it to help inform the national audience about what’s going on there? Or is it a combination?

O’Brien: All of the above. We were doing a story in Nevada trying to understand why the number of non-partisan voters has risen there and what the implications are, potentially, in the election. People in Nevada started picking non-partisan when politics got very ugly. So what does that mean?

Another story we did was with the mayor in Reading, Pennsylvania, and looking at the Latino population in his town. And at one point he said something like, “We have this massive number and they’re going to be very powerful, if they vote.” And that’s the message across-the-board. It’s really not a numbers game, it’s an if-they-vote game.

And then we’ve focused on Arizona, where they are looking at affordable housing and how that is going to impact how people vote. And we recently did something looking at rural hospitals in North Carolina.

We went to Harmony, Wisconsin where they have pretty consistently picked the winner of the presidential election. And their voter turnout is 92%. There’s a lot to learn from a Harmony, Wisconsin.

Our focus is just to educate everybody on how the world is changing – in a specific state, but also looking at the impact on the nation.

MediaPost: Pew Research Center just came out with a study showing that more than half of TikTok users get their news from the platform, with similar stats for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. How does that impact the way you do your job?

O’Brien: I’ve always viewed technological advances as an opportunity, because I don’t think there’s a lot of upside to just saying, “This is terrible.” If young people are getting their news from TIkTok, then you have to figure out how to migrate over to TikTok. I think it’s an opportunity.

I don’t think it’s fair to say they’re getting their news from TikTok. They’re getting it from news organizations on TikTok. It’s not coming from six people in their mom’s basements on TikTok.

The challenge is how do you deal with misinformation, or how do you deal with disinformation. This giant tranche of random information that you don’t really know how to sort through. And I think that’s the role of news organizations.

I think people just want to know who to believe when something is unfolding.