15. Bob Gatty
A life in journalism and thoughts on the state of our current media.
This week on the 15th episode of the Epics Podcast I am joined by a fellow podcaster Bob Gatty.
Bob has a podcast called “Lean to the Left”. Bob spent a career in journalism and politics working on both sides of the isle and now works on the Lean to the Left Network is now his way of refusing retirement. The network consists of two podcasts, a blog and more that features commentary on timely topics from the perspective someone who used to be a political insider, but is now on the outside looking in. They are fact-based, they also reflect thier own perspective -- which usually means "A Little Lean to the Left."
As you might guess this episode dives a little deeper into politics than we usually do on this show, but by no means is the focus.
Bob and I spent our time reliving some of Bob’s favorite stories from his reporting career and discussing the political ties of the media as well as how the shift to opinion based media has contributed to the political division in our country.
While obviously some political views are expressed in this episode, I want to reiterate that Epics does not want to declare any sort of political alignment. We are interested in people’s stories and how they effect social issues in our world. Politics plays a part in Bob’s story and therefore it wouldn’t be appropriate to avoid it in conversation or edit it all out afterwards. I want to remain respectful of everyone and their views, as always, while acknowledging the role that they all play in their stories regardless of if we agree with them or not.
I really enjoyed my conversation with Bob, and he actually interviewed me on his show not long before this interview took place! So be sure to check that out as well.
I felt particularly moved by how our country has shifted to opinion based reporting and media contributing to the division in our country. When he talked about that I felt like it was an obvious observation but not one that I think I had made myself. It makes so much sense that a shift away from fact based reporting in favor of opinion would be able to influence large groups of people, on both sides of every issue.
This shift along with the way we now consume our media online leading to many of us detaching from the news does make it seem like a very grim prospect for our future regarding news, particularly political.
I know that during the next election cylce that we have where I know I myself become much more tuned into the news that I will be thinking a lot about this interview and I hope that it can motivate all of us to be more critical of the media that we are consuming at all times to know if it is fact or opinion based whether we seem to agree with it or not.
