Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle discussed the role of the media and the reality of bias as one of three panel members at the annual Vegas Chamber of Commerce Conference in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, explaining that honesty goes a long way in reporting and “helps us build credibility with our audience.”
When asked if the media are biased, Boyle explained it is based on the mere fact that it is comprised of people who have different experiences and backgrounds that shape who they are and the decisions they make.
WATCH the full panel discussion below:
“No, we’re not artificial intelligence, right? You see artificial intelligence out there starting to write stories and whatnot, and that is a serious threat to the business. But I think the average person out there can tell if a story has been written by AI or if it’s been written by a person and as such, because we are people, our personal experiences — whether they’re about our beliefs, our history, people that we know, things that we’ve done over the course of our lives — inform the decisions that we make,” he said, explaining that journalists make a series of decisions when working that can factor into that perception of bias.
“Every story we cover, we’re making a decision. Should we cover this? Should we cover that? Should we cover this, and as are people in any other newsroom, right? The New York Times makes similar decisions, the Washington Post makes similar decisions,” he said, explaining that Breitbart News is different in that the outlet essentially tells you where it is coming from and what it believes upfront.
“The difference between a Breitbart and maybe some of those more traditional establishment media outlets is, we come right out and tell you what it is that we believe. I mean, you know what you’re getting. When you’re dealing with Breitbart, you know, that you’re dealing with a conservative media outlet, you know? You’re dealing with people that have certain viewpoints on the issues of, say, immigration or trade or any other political matter like that,” he said, noting that establishment media outlets are not as honest.
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“I believe that that honesty helps us build credibility with our audience,” he said, adding that he wishes other media outlets were as open about their biases.
Bias is not always malicious, either, Boyle said, emphasizing that it is “the fact of human nature” that we use “our experiences to inform our decision-making process.”
“And sometimes that goes down to which stories we cover, who we interview, who we don’t interview, which quotes we use, which quotes we don’t use. And story selection is probably the biggest place where you see the bias play out. And frankly, some of the biggest storylines over the last decade are the ones where we make our bones, where Breitbart separates ourselves from the rest of the media … like the rise of Donald Trump is a really good example of this,” Boyle said, noting that a lot of the media at the time totally wrote Trump off, but “they were wrong.”
“We didn’t and we were right. He won the election in 2016. … I think that across the media, if people were just a little bit more humble and a little bit more open with their audiences about what it is that informs their decision-making process, we’d be in a lot better world,” he said, later explaining that while Breitbart has a core audience — as other outlets have as well — there are many times stories will penetrate across the spectrum, where even establishment media outlets will pick up on the news. One recent example of this is Boyle’s July interview with former President Donald Trump, which several outlets gleaned from.
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Matthew Perdie / Breitbart News, Jack Knudsen / Breitbart News“It’s a little more complicated than like, ok, these are the right-wing people, and those are the left-wing people and nobody interacts with anybody else,” he said when asked if people are only going to sources to hear what they want to hear.
Later during the panel, Boyle explained that an outlet “can’t let business side decisions affect editorial decisions, they have to be independent.”
“You need to have that line,” he said, explaining that reporters are judged by several metrics — some subjective and others objective — when working and covering stories.
“Are they, you know, keeping up with enough stories are they doing? Are they on top of their beats? Are they covering stuff in-depth enough, but also, there are plenty of stories that will, you know, take off and go viral and, or get a lot of attention out there, or get a lot of earned media beyond our site. So there’s, there’s kind of that stuff, and it’s a little bit of both,” Boyle said, offering more perspective for others to understand what goes into reporting day to day.
