“And I know that you don’t,
But If I ask you if you love me
I hope you lie, lie, lie, lie to me”
“Lie to Me” - 5 Seconds of Summer

5 Seconds of Summer (or 5SOS) was founded in Australia in 2011. They gained their career in large part through YouTube, earning a spot as an opener for One Direction on an international tour through their online videos before they ever had a record deal. The group has taken off since they got their first record deal in 2014, selling more than 10 million albums and having their music streamed more than seven billion times on various streaming platforms.

The group toured and recorded nearly nonstop from that first tour until 2016, when the band took nearly a two-year break from releasing new music or touring before releasing their third studio album, “Youngblood.” “Lie to Me” was the third single from that album and featured American singer-songwriter Julia Michaels doing the female side of a back-and-forth lamentation about a relationship that never was.

For what it’s worth, the group released an acoustic version of the song that is how I first heard the song - and it’s tremendous, though Julia is not in that version.

Writing as a media member who does have to adhere to journalistic laws and regulation, hearing entertainment networks celebrate the actions taken this week by the White House to ban the largest international news agency from access to Presidential functions and to remove funding from National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Services, more commonly known as NPR and PBS has led to neck pain from shaking my head so frequently.

The reasoning given for taking such actions was that those agencies (along with hoards of other media that the President doesn’t appreciate) was that they have become biased and should not be funded to produce biased reporting. Let’s address that one straight away.

I listen to about a dozen news podcasts, and the range of their political leanings range from middle-left to middle-right, but I also heavily emphasize those who are highly-regarded for being factual - and having the journalistic credibility to issue corrections when they get the facts wrong.

However, those facts often don’t fit a narrative that the White House wants presented, and the current media room allowed to access and question the President certainly shows that. The questions asked of the White House during a press briefing sound like someone gave a sixth-grade reporter a media pass to the Grammys and she’s just enthralled to be meeting her favorite musicians, so she lobs in softball questions like, “What is your favorite song that you’ve done?”

Ad Fontes Media has really stepped into a niche of ranking news outlets based on two axes, one the density of fact-based reporting on a program and the other the political bias of a program. They’ve been doing this for a number of years, and quite frankly, they don’t have any issue calling out very popular podcasts. For instance, Joe Rogan consistently badmouths Ad Fontes because they rate him quite low on fact reporting and analysis on his show, though most who even like Rogan would state that’s a fair review, as his show is heavily based on the opinions that his guests espouse without a lot of fact-checking of those opinions.

On Ad Fontes’ current media bias chart, the most centered, unbiased, and fact-based news source is USAfacts.org. The second on the fact-based news programs that Ad Fontes ranks is “NPR News Now,” the daily short-form news program from NPR. As someone who listens to that show, I will say it’s a bit on the dry side, but it’s absolutely presenting just the base facts of a story. Third on that list is “The Journal,” the daily short news program put out by the Wall Street Journal, which has become one of my favorite news podcasts because it’s brief, to the point, and examines a lot of different issues.

The really interesting part is that second and third on that list are short-form podcasts of news sources that appear almost exactly opposite of one another a bit farther down the chart. The Wall Street Journal is as much on the first block of “right-wing” bias as NPR is on the “left-wing” side of the chart. Both put out tremendous short-form podcasts that are very centrist, yet their regular programming is viewed to skew slightly to one side.

For those who really want to see what unsubstantiated bias looks like, the very far right, lowest truth scores are held by shows such as Charlie Kirk and Infowars while Tony Michaels and Jimmy Dore occupy the similar lack of truth from the left side.

When the White House targets news agencies known for their fact-based reporting, it sends a pretty clear message - there’s some BS coming that they don’t want qualified journalists to hear because they know they’d be called out.
OAN ranks just a hair better than Charlie Kirk in veracity of reporting but is just as far right, yet they are in the White House media room…and they’re not considered bias, but the AP and NPR, both of whom are in the very first block of “bias” on Ad Fontes chart, are considered overly biased.

It’s smart to read between the lines. We recently had a governor who had a similar issue with news sources that wanted to seek the truth in their reporting. The same is happening now in Washington, D.C., where those who will present a certain message and not challenge the truth of statements being tossed out are the only ones given access.

While our city commission is apolitical, meaning they don’t run based on their party and instead have to win their seat based on community support, I could pretty clearly tell you the political leaning of each mayor and commissioner who has served in the time I’ve been covering the commission. I’ve called out the commission in this space a few times, but I’ve also never once had a member of the commission, regardless of their personal political leaning, attempt to push a false narrative with me, and I wouldn’t publish something like that.

With the rise of privately funded “independent” journalists, there are plenty of sites who write to those who are paying their bills, with no regard for truth. Despite what our attention-seeking White House may exemplify, clicks and views do not equal truth.

Hopefully, we can all look past the unfounded “bias” accusations and see them for what they are - an absconding of the truth and reality. Do we really want to encourage our children that the way to get ahead is to blatantly lie to the mass public?