Credibility Gap

Yeah, I know. It's the day before the long Memorial Day weekend. You're not thinking about the radio business, or the podcasting industry, or anything other than getting an extra day to sleep in, or go to the beach, or whatever it is you plan to do with your down time. Me, too. My plan for the weekend is to have no plans. That's the closest I come to vacation.

The long weekend is not, however, an adequate excuse to have no content whatsoever. That's true for your radio station -- maybe people won't want to listen to political talk while they're grilling their burgers, but they do have expectations that you'll be talking about something interesting. And even in the age of Daily Political Outrage, you CAN talk about things other than politics. It's okay. Nobody will hold it against you. Turns out there's plenty for you to talk about that isn't about Trump or Washington or state or local politics. You can take a break from it until people's heads are back in full operation.

I, on the other hand, have to write about the business. Let's get to that so we can wrap things up and go watch a ball game or something.

I'll keep it brief, since I've warned you about this before and it's coming up again. Just a couple of months ago, there was a report at Media Matters for America -- yeah, very liberal, not a friend of talk radio, I know, but these reports are important no matter what your politics are -- that pointed out how many radio shows talk about fake news as if it was legitimate. And that wasn't "fake news" in the Trumpian sense, but actual untrue stories, whether parodies or just plain made-up stuff of the kind you get in your Facebook news feed. The takeaway from that was that radio, and not just talk radio but many morning shows on music stations as well, is prone to being fooled by fake stories, and it reflects poorly on the medium. That was a warning. Did the industry heed it?

Of course not. There was a follow-up report this week, and many, many more shows and stations were caught spreading fake news as real.

Maybe you think it doesn't matter. Maybe you think, well, sure, if this story about a lottery winner dumping poop on his ex-boss's lawn isn't true, what's the harm? Maybe you already use fake callers and staged drama (we all know bits that are fake but not identified as such), so you don't care if a story's true. It's all entertainment, right? But your credibility is at stake. And your listeners trust you to give them truth. Airing that story without checking to see if it's real is violating that trust. And if a listener saw that same story and knows it's a fake -- seriously, it's very easy to identify many of those stories as emanating from phony "news" sites -- that listener will think you're a moron. When the story is less benign -- when you're accusing someone of saying something they didn't, or you're stirring up outrage over something that didn't happen or was taken way out of context -- you're doing something that actively hurts society. Is that what you want?

Again, there's plenty you can talk about, whether politics or lifestyle or "stupid news" that's legitimate. And it's easy to figure out what's from a legitimate source and which are from phony clickbait mills. If you think, well, that's work, and I'd rather rely on my prep service and whatever's on my Facebook page, you're being lazy; it takes practically no time to do rudimentary "research" to figure out that the "outrageous" story you're thinking of using on the air is a fake, whether you check it with Snopes or you do a Google news search to see if a real news source is also reporting it or just being aware of which sources are unreliable (hint: If you've never heard of a news site, chances are good that it's either fake or partisan). This doesn't have to be a chore.

All I'm saying is that even in the case of goofy kicker stories, facts matter. You don't need fakery to be entertaining or to fill time on your show. (Unless, that is, your entire show is parody, in which case you can surely write better and funnier fake stories than the ones you see on Facebook.) You're better than that, aren't you?

=============================

You'll find nothing but stuff from legitimate news sources when you get your material from Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, and it's all free. Check it out by clicking here and/or by following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. There's the Podcasting section at AllAccess.com/podcasts.

Make sure you're subscribed to Today's Talk, the daily email newsletter with the top news stories in News, Talk, and Sports radio and podcasting. You can check off the appropriate boxes in your All Access account profile's Format Preferences and Email Preferences sections if you're not already getting it.

My podcast is "The Evening Bulletin with Perry Michael Simon," a quick (two minutes or less) daily thing, and you can get it at Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Stitcher, and RadioPublic. Spotify, too. You can also use the RSS feed and the website where you can listen in your browser, or my own website where they're all embedded, too.

You can follow my personal Twitter account at @pmsimon, and my Instagram account (same handle, @pmsimon) as well. And you can find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pmsimon, and at pmsimon.com.

=============================

While you're checking out for the weekend, don't forget that I'll be on a panel about podcasting at The Conclave, July 18-20 in fabulous St. Louis Park, Minnesota, playing Grumpy Contrarian again alongside Seth Resler, Dave Beasing, Sheryl Worsley, and Michael Brandvold, and you can register here for that. After that, I'll be at Podcast Movement in Philadelphia in July. Okay, enough business. Go have a weekend already.

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
www.facebook.com/pmsimon
Twitter @pmsimon
Instagram @pmsimon