Ashleigh Banfield Bets Big on ‘Unbiased’ News, But Can Airing ‘All Sides’ Succeed in an Era of Polarized Facts?
This column marks another installment in the series, The Follow-Up, aimed at examining the high-profile journalists and standout press moments shaping our media ecosystem.
Can any media organization or cable news host succeed in delivering on a promise of objective journalism in a moment when the country is increasingly polarized not just over politics but about facts themselves?
Veteran reporter and TV host Ashleigh Banfield is betting the answer is yes — and her new, one-hour 10 p.m. interview show, Banfield, debuts tonight on NewsNation’s prime time programming. The network’s 8–11 p.m. news broadcast debuted in September during the home stretch of the 2020 election, positioning itself as an “unbiased” alternative to the partisan echo chambers of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News.
Banfield’s own career arc speaks to the fickle nature of cable news and the risks of a media environment that resorts to groupthink. She literally rose to national fame for her compelling Ground Zero coverage on 9/11 and the days following. She then earned her own MSNBC show with intrepid reporting from around the Middle East in the months afterward. But within a year, her ratings had dipped and the network abruptly canceled her show. And then, in April 2003, she memorably called out the media’s lockstep, too-jingoistic narrative in the early days of the US’s Iraqi invasion, after which NBC News issued a not-so-subtle statement effectively disowning her views and then proceeded to make her persona non grata at the network for the next year-and-a-half as punishment for speaking out.
Since then, she’s moved across the cable news universe, returning to air with a daytime show on CourtTV in 2005, then co-anchoring CNN’s morning show for a few years before shifting to its sister network HLN, where she covered legal issues in prime time. Banfield returned to CourtTV in 2018 to host a true crime documentary series.
Her new show, she said, will seek to pick up the mantle of venerable long-form cable news interview shows from Larry King and Charlie Rose, while avoiding the tradition pitfalls of cable news polarization with an “unbiased, fact-based tonic” that seeks out “thought leaders” from across the political spectrum.
“I think over the last 20 years, the press has retreated to its echo chamber and has been bouncing around in there finding great success — and that’s great for them,” Banfield said in a phone interview. “But it wasn’t great for us, the viewers, the American public, the consumers of information. I would like to offer an alternative to the way the news environment has evolved. I’d like to get back to when [the public] could feel they could trust what they were watching, would give them a complete story, not just a tailored story.”
However, this is not the first time a cable news network held out the promise of so-called true objectivity as an untapped market.
“If we do the kind of reporting that is considered ‘back to the future’ — the hard-core journalistic reporting, not biased, not for entertainment, but fact-based — do we have a place? All the research indicates yes.” That’s not a quote from Banfield or a NewsNation executive, though it certainly could be. In fact, it was Al Jazeera America’s then-CEO, Ehab Al Shihabi who made the same claim to me back in 2014 after the Qatari government had sunk nearly a billion dollars into that fledging cable news network. Barely two years after Al Shihabi’s bold pledge, AJAM was off the air.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Banfield’s new interview show replaces what had been the third newscast hour of NewsNation, which, as AJAM did, has struggled mightily in the ratings despite the big three cable networks enjoying record audiences this past fall.
Moreover, Banfield’s commitment to hearing from “all sides” and NewsNation’s deployment of in-house rhetorologists to carefully parse news perspectives across a number of quantitative and qualitative measures raises red flags about enforcing false balance in an era of asymmetric partisan misinformation.
When a former president continues to unabashedly push a toxic lie about having lost due to widespread election fraud, U.S. senators are happy to make admittedly baseless claims about who was responsible for the Capitol insurrection, and a newly-elected congresswoman has pushed surreal, anti-Semitic QAnon conspiracies, Sandy Hook massacre, and 9/11 Truther myths, and publicly called for the “execution” of House Democrats, there is a compelling argument that “all sides” are not equally deserving of airtime if they’re going to spread bigotry and lies and push dangerous misinformation that undermines our democratic institutions.
Below is a lightly edited transcript of my interview with Banfield.
Mediaite: And a lot of people are invoking 9/11, they’re talking about a 9/11-style commission and all this kind of feels in some ways similar to the moment when you first rose to national prominence on cable TV. Do you see any similarities between where you got your start in terms of a national audience and kind of where the country is now? And do you bring that approach or that similarity to what you’re going to try and do with the new show?
Ashleigh Banfield: You know, I think 9/11 just, on its face, was just such a different moment because it was a compilation of minutes that were apocalyptic for America. Losing a half million people over the last year has been a slow drip of trauma for all of us to accommodate and to try and reconcile. They’re very different experiences. And I don’t see them the same. I understand how they can feel the same if you look at them on paper. But I think for me and my existence in the national news environment, I feel like this is a great time to be doing what I’m doing, because it’s very different than it was in 2001. We were not anywhere near as diametrically opposed and polarized as we are now. And I think if there’s anything this country needs right now, it’s an unbiased, fact-based tonic. It’s a conversation without an attitude. It’s a discussion without a smear. And it’s just a genuine appreciation for all the things that make up people, not just one thing they might have, which is their viewpoint.
Mediaite: You talk about the different dynamics in the country, do you think the press is different and how it’s covered things, not just Covid, but perhaps like the Capitol riot on January 6th? Do you think the press has done a different job or is in a different place than it was 20 years ago?
Ashleigh Banfield: Without question. I think over the last 20 years, the press has retreated to its echo chamber and has been bouncing around in there finding great success. And that’s great for them. But it wasn’t great for us, the viewers, the American public, the consumers of information. I would like to offer an alternative to the way the news environment has evolved. I’d like to get back to when [the public] could feel they could trust what they were watching, would give them a complete story, not just a tailored story.
Because right now, if you want to consume a story and you want to have you want to do your due diligence, it takes a lot of work and your wrist gets tired with the remote control flipping around channels to figure out what the complete picture is. Our network is specifically geared to allow you to relax and watch one program or one channel and feel safe that you know all sides.
Mediaite: Right, obviously, you kind of hinted on that, but News Nation is really positioning itself as “unbiased” in its rollout. But how do you define that? Because, you know, a lot of media critics would say there’s no such thing as objective journalism. You know, there’s a million choices that go and every part of a news story that you touch. Whether it starts from who you book or don’t book, what questions you ask or don’t ask, the fact-checks you do or don’t do that provide some kind of subjective or slant or, you know, at least perspective on what the news is. How do you define what unbiased is?
Ashleigh Banfield: I think you’re right. I think a lot of people pay lip service to that slogan and then they go ahead and they do what they do unchecked. But we have decided to actually put mechanisms in place to ensure that its mission is carried out. Mechanism number one and one that really had me looking a second time was rhetorologists that are employed by this by this network. Rhetorologists are there specifically to watch all of the scripts and the story count and the story choices and the guest choices to ensure that they are more balanced. And that’s when, you know, that’s a great position to to actually add to a news team because news teams work at pace, things can get lost on the fly. Bias can enter in on the fly unchecked, unnoticed, unplanned. And the rhetorologist are literally standing 30,000 feet above watching to make sure that we are doing what we promised our viewers. And that is a fair and balanced job. That’s number one. Number two, the staff that’s been added to this network comes from everywhere. Every single opinion and philosophy is represented on this staff. And if you do sort of a wide swath right through the middle of NewsNation, you’ll see people who’ve come from MSNBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and the list goes on and everyone is invited to have an open dialogue and bring their perspectives into the news decisions every day.
Mediaite: Obviously, you you referenced “fair and balanced” in there as sort of a motto. Fox News employed that motto for decades and, obviously, it was not fair and balanced. I don’t think anyone would dispute that Fox has a specific, very conservative approach to how it does the news. You mentioned these rhetorologists, but how do you how do you prevent from slipping into both sides ism or false equivalence, you know, by if you’re given a record of trying to achieve some sort of time equity in terms of viewpoints, how do you make sure that you’re not over-valuing an opinion that may not be true? For example, how would you deal with some of the debate about the “big lie” of election fraud that, you know, former President [Donald] Trump has been pushing? How would you treat that on the show? How would you book that? How would your rhetorologists deal with that in terms of trying to come at that issue fairly without platforming a conspiracy theory?
Ashleigh Banfield: I think, as journalists, we we’re in a very imprecise science right? And I think it’s something that is a process throughout the day, when you open up your news discussion, your story selection, your show planning to an entire team and you craft a program, that has to go through an executive level as well. I think that the people that have been put in place, not only at the associate producer level, producer level, executive producer level, but executive C-suite level, I think those people represent to me, a serious effort and an altruistic effort to carry out this mission. So is there a litmus test on every single decision? I think it would be impossible to get on the air for any television broadcast if that’s how you are employed, if that’s what you employed. But I think your gut is a useful tool in this business. And as the old expression goes, just like porn. I know it when I see it. I know it when I see it, when there’s bias, I know it when I see it, when there’s a decision that’s made that doesn’t serve the viewer.
And make no mistake, we’re all altruistic people as journalists, we’re all altruistic in our craft. But this is also a business decision. I look at America right now as being very underserved by fact-based journalism. There’s a massive market that’s starving for this product and we’re putting it on the shelf. They’ve asked and we thought, what a great idea. So we’re not in the business of, you know, promising this amazing market a product and then delivering them something else because we don’t want them to lose.
Mediaite: Live TV, although clearly presents its own problems, you know, because you can’t control what somebody says on live TV, as you can in an edited interview. And, you know, one of the factors of live TV is booking. You know, who you put on air greatly determines kind of what your content is going to be. And yesterday at the congressional hearing, Soledad O’Brien, you know, put it pretty bluntly. She said, “Don’t book liars.” You know, how would you approach someone like Senator Ron Johnson? Would you book him on your show knowing that in the past couple of days at the congressional hearing, in public, he’s, you know, intimated that the Capitol insurrection was planned by Antifa or other left wing militants of which there’s no proof and kind of forwarded a lot of other unsubstantiated rumors and misinformation about that event. Would you put him on the air, for example, if the concern is he’s demonstrated a track record of not being honest with the public?
Ashleigh Banfield: I think it’s an amazing question. I think it’s the number one question out there right now. And I’m going to give you an answer and employ the mission of our new network with my answer as a great example of how we would treat that. On one hand, I fully respect those who take issue with people who then facts to support their argument. I fully understand the angst of those who are frustrated with hearing that a lot, especially lately. I fully appreciate the thought that maybe the remedy is to stop allowing those voices to be heard. On the other hand, and this is where my balance comes in. I don’t think it’s a journalist’s decision to decide who speaks and who doesn’t. Not in this country. I think the journalist has just a tougher job in that you’ve got to do a deep dove and study hard and then you have to ask them the questions, allow them to have their viewpoint, would allow the viewer to make the ultimate decision, not me the journalist. Allow the viewer. So in that respect, my feeling is I would like to have these guests on the air. I would like to have all of these guests on the air. And I would like to ask them how they arrived at their philosophy, their decision, their argument. And I like to propose a few opposing arguments to them from others and ask how they respond to that. And that’s how the viewer gets served. They don’t get served in a bias of omission.
Mediaite: Would you have Donald Trump on?
Ashleigh Banfield: I’ve interviewed Donald Trump before? I’ve interviewed Donald have a few times before. He’s a very difficult interview. You know, as I’m sure this is not going to be news to you, Reed. But he’s a very difficult interview because he doesn’t allow the interviewer to finish the question.
And that gets very, very frustrating. And that also, I think, is frustrating for viewers because they understand they’re not getting the question that they want to hear answered. So it’s a frustrating process, but I believe also in that, Reed, that that will show what the guest is all about. For some people have always said, in courtrooms, when you have people on the stand, the best prosecutor or defense attorney is the one that allows the witness to hang him or herself with their words. And I feel that’s the way I’d like to prosecute my profession, allow the witness to do his or her own bidding and damage or successes. I think that’s the way it should be.
Mediaite: One of the dichotomies that we just saw in the last couple of months is that what you say on a TV show, on cable news does not have the same consequences as what you would say in court, which is why we saw this huge disparity between what the Trump campaign, for example, would say on air about election fraud and then what they would tell a court of law or a judge, right? Because there were penalties, very specific penalties to lying in front of a court as opposed to what you say on air. And while it’s important to and I can understand your viewpoint of saying, well, we can air those positions and let them him or herself, hang themselves. But isn’t it true that social science is going to show that letting someone lie continually or spread misinformation really doesn’t harm them? There really isn’t a backlash from the public from that, because it becomes down to the journalist saying one thing or trying to fact check them in real time, which gets incredibly difficult with someone like Donald Trump and the interviewee pushing their own agenda. And then the public gets more confused about who’s right.
Ashleigh Banfield: Well, you know, again, there’s there’s two arguments, you’re absolutely right in the fact that this is not an easy question to answer. But I think that the answer doesn’t lie or the solution doesn’t lie in stopping people from being heard. I think as Americans, it’s our duty to do your jury duty, be a part of this process, be a part of the democratic process and do your diligence too. But it’s you run into a very dangerous corridor if you are choosing the voices that people should hear. Especially if you’re not telling them that you’re choosing the voices they should hear. I’ve always felt that. The thing about America and the First Amendment, is that it allows anyone to be what they want to be. It allows anyone to think the way they want to think. It allows them to practice religions that are completely, diametrically opposed to one another. And no one, you know, will, in a perfect world. no one will, you know, decry you so that. But when we start going down a road and dictating who Americans can hear from and who they can’t just because it’s an unpalatable or what they’re saying is untrue or it’s not a truth to us that becomes a very dangerous place, and I have traveled to places like that and I didn’t want to live in places like that.
But on the other hand, I recognize what you’re saying. If you repeat a lie enough, many will believe it. The problem is, is I think when you come right down to it, that’s on you. If you’re not prepared to do your due diligence, if you are dancing in your echo chamber. Night after night after night, this is what’s going to happen to you. You will become the unsuspecting victim of bias, of a bias by omission. And so the mission of this network is to not let that happen.
Mediaite: It does, but still journalists have to have agency over who they talk to and who they interview. The journalist is acting as a sort of a proxy for the public, but the public is expecting the journalists to know enough to ask the right kind of questions, of the right people
Ashleigh Banfield: I understand, but I think at that point you’re suggesting that is it right for me to say [Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene can’t be a guest on my show when she’s a United States congresswoman and she’s been elected by her constituents. Her opponents find her past behaviors online and even in public offensive, um, we find them untrue. But her constituents. Obviously support her, isn’t it my job to find out why? To find out how did this happen to get to the bottom of the Marjorie Taylor Greene? But, you know, if if the mandate is to stop putting people on who I, Ashleigh Banfield, decide are telling the truth, how can that be a service to the country?
Mediaite: Do you have to interview Marjorie Taylor Greene to understand her story?
Ashleigh Banfield: I would love to know how Marjorie Taylor Greene came to believe the things she believes. That’s my job. My job is to find out why people feel the way they do things, think the way they do, to understand them better. If I shut the door on them, I am just entrenching the polarization that we’re currently suffering through. It’s not to agree with her. It’s not to agree with [Rep. Alexandra] Ocasio-Cortez, because it’s not to agree with anybody. It’s to find out what makes them tick. I really, truly believe that if we cared enough about each other as human beings to be better off, we wouldn’t be so combative in our philosophies. I think that we would be more fair minded towards coming to the middle ground. Right now, we’re at war. And when you’re at war, nobody wants to have a chat before they kill each other, right?
Mediaite: Just to be clear, so there are no limits on who you talk to on your show. I mean, based on, let’s say, anybody that has a significant audience, you would interview them?
Ashleigh Banfield: I mean, that’s a really good question. I think that would be open for debate with our team.
Mediaite: Would you interview a neo-Nazi?
Ashleigh Banfield: It’s a good question. I think I’ve seen plenty interviewed already. For instance, I’ve seen clips after clips after clips of people from Capitol Hill screaming all sorts of polemics and epithets and everyone has decided that they’re putting that on the air, because it’s the story. And finding the truth to the story has been critical, understanding what happened has been critical. Am I going to go out seeking the most razor-sharp, fire stokers out there? That’s not my interest, my interest is thought leaders, those who are making a difference, those who are rising to the top of their chosen profession, those who have a secret sauce: that’s who I’m chasing. I’m not running into the depths of 4chan to find someone who’s going to give a headline that will make people upset. That is absolutely not what my show’s about. My show is to find out how all of those people who’ve risen to the top got there and maybe we can all learn a little something from them to be better at what we do too. OK, I hope that answered the question, because I think it’s a really good question and I think it’s the debate and it’s the philosophical struggle that every journalist has. When do you say when and when do you say it’s not my job to to say when? Right now, it’s a real I mean, you go through this everyday, I’m sure, and your team goes through this every day, it’s that’s why journalism is not easy.
Mediaite: Right. I agree. It’s and there’s an editorial decision to everything we do. And I think it’s implicit that we use that responsibility responsibly to figure out what the downstream impacts of who we talk to and what we platform and even discuss have, you know, and sometimes they can be the side effects can be those that we don’t even recognize or they can do more harm than good in the long run in terms of informing the public.
Ashleigh Banfield: You know, just about up because that’s brilliant. That’s exactly, you hit the nail on the head. It is dangerous to refuse to put Marjorie Taylor Greene on the air as it is to those seeking out someone who has an electrifying, deranged viewpoint in the depths of 4chan. It’s as it’s as dangerous to do both, to ignore someone who actually is becoming a thought provoking and a thought leader and is prominent as it is to find someone to put them into the spectrum and let people see it. It’s both of those missions are not in service to to the viewer.
Mediaite: I think I would argue that Representative Greene’s case, she embodies both of those things, though. She is a bomb thrower, who by a factor of having been elected to Congress has got the imprimatur of, you know, sobriety, but her views are those of that would you know her views about what QAnon once she was a 9/11 truther I mean, these are things that Were those views coming out of the mouth of someone who wasn’t in Congress. Most responsible journalists would say, I don’t want to put that on air. I don’t think that does anybody — I don’t think that does the public any good.
Ashleigh Banfield: Her views are the views of many of her constituents. And then it’s our responsibility to figure out where we are. And I think that’s something that is, you can’t ignore. And there are lots of because they are doing repulsive things in a non influencing way, but when they are in a position of public trust, then you can’t ignore them. One thing I don’t like is, is the omission of a certain party on the various channels. It saddens me to see that only certain parties go on certain channels. That’s not going to be how things are on NewsNation. That’s for sure.