Communicating with purpose, leader to leader… 

August 26th, 2023

From the desk of Mike Rusher, President of The Results Company

Imagine opening up a North Carolina newspaper and reading an informative, current, and factual story with an appropriate headline and thinking to yourself, “That was really well done.”

If you’re like most of our readers, you’re either laughing or feeling a bit unenthusiastic. Don’t worry, you’re not alone – and you have options.

What follows is something of an origin piece, the story of why TRC Nexus exists: To cut through the noise and bring you something valuable, informative, efficient, and trustworthy. Here’s our SitRep to see if we’re on the right course. 

While it’s true that the state’s media landscape is largely broken, we think we’re on a pathway to help fill the void. Thanks for sticking with us.

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If we accept that North Carolina media is a mess, we must also accept that the state’s political media is a complete disaster. It’s a root cause of why the general public views media outlets so poorly. How’d we get here?

Over the last two decades, advocacy journalism has replaced middle-of-the-road objectivity. The end result is people now read outlets with specialized news tailored to their preferred opinions.

The dearth of balls-and-strikes journalism has pushed public opinion of media to embarrassingly low levels. And in North Carolina, we not only have low trust in media, but blue-collar residents feel like the media is actually out to get them.

This week, Peter Zeihan suggested technological advances, starting with the fax machine, eliminated the layers of human review in the newsroom that ensured balance. Then came email and the internet where information travelled instantly, and everyone with a keyboard could be a writer. Newsroom staffs started shrinking, and there were less eyeballs on stories as they went to publication – and in came the opportunity for bad actors to weave their agenda into assignments. And then, articulate and well-spoken leaders emerged to gain followings using deliberate deception.

He’s absolutely right.

Gallup’s annual polling revealed that the media’s trust deficit continues to be historically awful. Just 18% of Americans have trust in newspapers, down 3% since 2021. Television news is even worse at 14%, down 2% since 2021. To put that into perspective, Americans trust the Supreme Court (27%), Public Schools (26%), The Presidency (26%), and even Organized Labor (25%) more than newspapers and television news.

Yikes.

Other than complain, what can be done about it? Two strategies come to mind: Push back publicly against offending media outlets to increase the cost of biased coverage, and offer an alternative.

Here at home, a small non-profit put on a clinic in aggressively counter attacking a large, biased media outlet. It started in December when the McClatchy conglomerate, which owns the Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News & Observer, published a series of hit pieces on poultry farmers in rural North Carolina. McClatchy branded their campaign “Big Poultry” and attacked the industry from every conceivable angle, billing themselves as saviors to rural North Carolinians who surely want the poultry industry to leave them alone.

In the fine print, McClatchy disclosed that their series was funded with special interest money from environmentalist groups. Worse, the outlets ran story after story detailing how they landed national journalism awards for their hit pieces – this caused many to assume they were positioning themselves for a Pulitzer Prize.

What happened next was a bit like a mixture of exercising the pent-up aggression of Oliver Anthony singing ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’. Farmers fought back through the NC Ag Partnership. Over five months, they released a slow drip of counter punches to the McClatchy series, and even commissioned a poll to measure the public’s trust (and the lack thereof) in McClatchy in the very communities they reported on.

It wasn’t pretty – *queue the announcer:* “fighters, take your corners.”

NC Ag Partnership first placed an op-ed in Carolina Journal, calling out the paper’s funding scheme – jab landed. They then placed a national story on Fox News that exposed the dubious special interest money scheme that funded McClatchy’s series – cross hook landed. They then rolled out monthly op-eds to counterstrike, with polling data, the heart of McClatchy’s narrative – uppercuts landed. The messaging of the NC Ag Partnership marinated and spread throughout rural North Carolina and beyond.  Then came a moment of truth – In May, the Pulitzer prize winners were announced – no mention of the widely criticized “Big Poultry” series – down goes Frazier.

Of course, it would be difficult to say with certainty that a small but ever determined Ag group derailed McClatchy’s quest for a Pulitzer in spectacular fashion – BUT it certainly would have been quite difficult for Pulitzer’s award juries to have missed the organized criticism of McClatchy’s work, if they did their job or… have the internet. 

But, aggressive campaigns can’t combat every errant story. So where do we go from here?

Delivering honest news and recapsto influential leaders at the intersection of business, policy, and politics.

Situational awareness of the news landscape is critical to the success of this type of communication and its mission. For instance, we were the first to produce a media bias analysis for North Carolina, complete with longform methodology, and we’re excited to announce a 2023-2024 update is already underway.

Understanding the many biases that exist in the publications that claim to serve business leaders truly highlights the opportunity we have before us. The Gallup polling revealed something striking – small business continues to be the most trusted institution in the United States.

Small businesses create, carry, and cultivate hope. Sadly, better equipping these and other leaders is not a core concern for media publications in your morning news routines.  

Many of you reading this are part of the most trusted institution, or are in a position to lead –we believe you have a great responsibility. That’s why we’ll continue to give you the most current need-to-know information at the intersection of business, politics, and policy. And if you want to talk about what else we can do for you, our inbox is always open.

Thank you for joining us.

Mike Rusher