We’re all familiar with the saying, “You’re known by the company you keep.” Etymologists say it probably originated with the Greek playwright Euripedes, who was born 25 centuries ago – so it’s a well-established concept. It’s always been useful to consider in the context of politics, because a politician who is comfortable with unsavory characters, say, is probably not somebody you’d want to entrust with your vote. But it’s also worth weighing these days as we think about the challenges facing journalism in the digital age.
This comes to mind just now because of a sort of civil war raging in America’s right wing over just how much room so-called conservatives ought to give to avowed racists and antisemites. Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who remains one of the far right’s most influential voices, spawned the fight last month when he gave a warm welcome on his popular podcast to an avowed white supremacist and misogynist, Nick Fuentes. During the interview, Fuentes criticized what he called “organized Jewry;” he called for the creation of a “pro-white” Christian movement, and he said he was a “fan” of Joseph Stalin. He said white men should “run everything,” that black people (quote) “should be imprisoned, for the most part” and that women should “shut up,” though he added a four-letter word to that last scintillating notion.
Tucker Carlson did not challenge those bigoted views. He said Fuentes was “amazing,” and said the guy’s ideas were (in Carlson’s words) “not crazy” – that the right should take them seriously. Just to remind you: Nick Fuentes had dinner with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago last year, so there’s some precedent for giving a place at the table, literally, to a misogynistic, racist antisemite.
Some leading Republicans and key conservative voices scolded Carlson; others have come to his defense – including some key figures shaping Trump administration policies, like the head of the Heritage Foundation. It seems to be a battle over whether this sort of thinking – hateful stuff, most of us would agree – should be mainstreamed among the roughly 45 percent of American adults who identify with or lean toward the Republican party. That is: Is what Nick Fuentes is saying, and what Tucker Carlson is platforming, really the face of conservatism in America these days?
So you may wonder: Who is supporting this sort of thinking? Well, you might conclude that the sponsors of Tucker Carlson’s podcast are. The online journalist Judd Legum identified three underwriters of Tucker Carlson: Rocket Money, a popular budgeting app; Eight Sleep, which markets a temperature-controlled mattress topper; and Beam, a so-called wellness company that sells protein powder and sleep aids and the like.
I can’t say that Rocket Money, Eight Sleep and Beam necessarily endorse the views presented on Tucker Carlson’s podcast – but they surely enable those views to spread. That’s what underwriters and sponsors do.
During my 30 years as a newspaper editor, I would occasionally hear from readers who accused us of kowtowing to advertisers. And I would insist (as I do now) that advertisers had no impact on our reporting or our opinion pages. But their support certainly did enable us to undertake that fair and honest journalism – just as the sponsors of Tucker Carlson’s podcast enable him to spread the voice of Nick Fuentes to the millions of people in his audience.
There was a time when a politician tried to organize an advertiser boycott of the newspaper I edited. I like to think that he came up short because the advertisers saw more value in honest reporting than in catering to a politician who claimed to have been injured by that reporting.
These days, I’m mainly lending my support to non-profit journalism, which is the fastest-growing segment of the information ecosystem. That includes organizations like this public radio station that are supported by gifts and underwriting and philanthropy. The programming and the reporting here – like the work produced by the other newsrooms I’m backing – is only possible because of that support. And why do people provide it? Because they believe in the value of the work. They welcome being associated with it.
I don’t get why any business – or individual, for that matter – would want to support an entity that gives uncritical space to antisemitism and misogyny and racism. You’re known by the company you keep, as old Euripedes wrote. I’d say it’s good to keep company with the truth-tellers.
Rex Smith, the host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
