Unpacking Bias and Curiosity in Journalism with Julie Rose

Nearly 4 in 10 Americans now say they actively avoid the news. Why is our information landscape leaving so many people overwhelmed, cynical, or checked out?

In this episode, Will and Josh sit down with award-winning journalist Julie Rose, host of the Top of Mind and Uncomfy podcasts, to explore the moral cost of our fast-paced, sensational news culture. After years at NPR stations and BYUradio, Julie burned out—and reimagined journalism from the ground up. She now creates longform conversations designed to slow us down, challenge certainty, and foster empathy.

Together, they unpack media bias, bridge-building across ideological divides, abortion discourse, and why persuasion may not be the goal of dialogue—but curiosity might be. If you’ve ever felt disillusioned with the news, this is your invitation to rethink how you consume—and contribute to—the conversation.
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Guest Bio
Julie Rose is an award-winning journalist and host of the Top of Mind podcast, where she explores hard topics with empathy, curiosity, and nuance. Formerly a host at BYUradio and a reporter for NPR stations including WFAE Charlotte, Rose has conducted over 10,000 interviews in her career. Her work focuses on deepening understanding across political, cultural, and moral divides.

Top of Mind with Julie Rose: https://www.byuradio.org/topofmind
Uncomfy Podcast: https://www.topofmind.org/uncomfy

Transcript

0:17

Hey, welcome back, Faithful Politics listeners and watchers. I don't know why I had that little rough in my voice, like, hey, welcome back. But I'm your political host, Will Wright, joined by my trusty sidekick, Pastor Josh Bircham. How's it going, Josh? Doing well, thanks, well. And I don't mean to demean you by saying my trusty sidekick. I the relationship we have, we're each other's sidekicks. Yes, are both trusty sidekicks to one another. Yes, we're both Robins in this relationship. Well, joining us today is Julie Rose, who is an award winning journalist and host of the Top of Mind podcast. uh After years reporting for NPR stations and hosting a daily show on BYU radio, I almost missed that R. She began to feel overwhelmed by the new cycle, something I think a lot of us can probably relate to. So she just imagined her own show into a weekly podcast that dives deep into hard topics with empathy. Ooh, that's a curse word. Curiosity and a focus on understanding. So welcome to the show, Julie. Oh, you guys, I'm so pleased to be here. So excited to be in this sandwich between the political and the faithful. And I have to apologize for a little bit of a rough in my voice. And I know exactly why I have it. It's because I spent last week at church camp with the teenage girls, inhaling a lot of smoke and a lot of dust in a lot of close quarters. And I came back with a cold of all the blessings. So I apologize for that. I'm a little congested. Yeah, no, no. Well, I guess for those that aren't aware of who you are, can you just share a little bit about like uh your background, kind of how long you've been in this journalism game uh and what led you to start a podcast called Top of Mind? Yeah, well, long story short, I um always, I mean, I guess way back in the day, like I remember in sixth grade, my teacher started a classroom newsletter with like a typewriter and whiteout, you know, in the back room of the portable where our class was held. And I was the first to sign up to work on the class newspaper and loved it. always, without knowing what it was, I always wanted to be a journalist. I'm like deeply nosy. I'm really curious and really, really love telling stories. So fast forward to college, I ended up actually kind of chickening out on the journalism front and decided that maybe public relations was going to be like an easier lifestyle and also would maybe fit a little more with my vision of becoming a mother and having kids and wanting to be able to do something that I could do kind of on the side from home. um So I did public relations. I was in that for about eight years after college. And then In the early 2000s, I just wasn't loving it. um And so I went to the local very tiny public radio station in Salt Lake City where I was living at the time. I asked them if I could sort of volunteer, learn the ropes. I bought some recording gear on Half.com and I'd fallen in love with the storytelling shows on NPR, like This American Life. And I thought, that sounds so fun. Maybe I could do that. I spent a year just like reporting on city council meetings. county fairs and whatever after hours. uh Well, I had my day job still because I had a mortgage and I thought, you know, there's no way I'm going to be able to change careers. This is just a fun hobby. Right time, right place. There a job opened up. I made the pivot, spent a few more years working full time for that public radio station, moved out to North Carolina, reported for WFAE in Charlotte, which led to this was in 2008. For about six years I was there. really big political stories, race stories, environmental stories, and just it was awesome. Did a lot of reporting for the networks, for the NPR shows, morning edition, all things considered. And then a little more than a decade ago, about 11 years ago, my parents who were back in my hometown, I never planned to go back to my hometown, but they were back in my hometown of Provo, Utah, and uh they needed some help. And... The family and the kids had never materialized for me. I'm the oldest. I was in a position to be able to help, and I wanted to. So I left North Carolina. I came back to my hometown thinking this was kind of maybe a temporary thing, but God provides. And I showed up um just at a moment when BYU, my alma mater, Brigham Young University, was expanding their offerings on BYU Radio, which they had just gotten a license to broadcast on satellite radio, SiriusXM. So they needed some content and I was there. And so I started hosting a daily live radio show. So seven years, a show called Top of Mind, ah every day, Monday through Friday, in-depth conversations for two hours, if you can imagine. Every single day we would do maybe six interviews per show. uh It was, I mean, did more than 10,000 interviews over those seven years on everything you can imagine. and loved it and was burned out every six months and ready to light my hair on fire and leave the building. um But it was a great training ground for a different kind of really understanding what makes a good conversation, what makes a good question in a live setting. And then I burned out. So like you were alluding to, well, this was around, gosh, everybody was burning out. was around the pandemic time frame, right? Or I was like, I can't do the news anymore. I would go on these news fasts over the weekend and I'd feel so guilty about it. And then I'd come back on Monday and be like, what did I miss? no, what did I miss? Cause I have to get caught up cause I have to do a show today. Anyway, it was like very, and I'm a very naturally anxious person. um during this time I was like, I don't think I can keep doing this. And plus I don't think I'm doing anything useful to the world. Like if I don't like the news, then what am I doing contributing to it? As a journalist, I'm just making more people upset and stressed out and depressed, right? And so, um It was right around that time that I kind of had this turning point. And as luck would have it, that was also the moment when I was invited to reimagine the show as a podcast with my team. That's really, really cool. It's always awesome to hear people's journeys, what took them to where they are. You I never once ever thought I would ever have a media badge. And we went to like this. I mean, I had zero. aspirations to ever have a media badge and um sorry oh shoot i knocked my desk there but uh and then now like we go we've gone to a conference and we sat at the media table we're getting like uh you know invitations to go meet you know a potential governor and could meet her as media and it's just like this is so bizarre to me but it's amazing to hear the transformation that you went through. And I gotta say, just like to help us understand like what leads to that kind of burnout, like how does the news like cycle work? Like when you're there, when you're in the newsroom, when you're supposed to do broadcast, you're supposed to be covering all this news. How does it work? What leads to that kind of break neck um pace? Like what's going on in there that makes it so challenging? well, so there's two things, right? But when you work in the news business, especially breaking news, daily news, any kind of newsroom, like at a local paper or television station or public radio, Like the news never sleeps. There's like something's always happening when you're on vacation that you have to come back and scramble to pick up on. you don't, nobody gets to, nobody takes holidays because, I mean, you do, but you have to like rotate through and only the really high seniority people actually get Christmas day off. or whatever high holiday is yours. Most people have to, you have to work your way up and work many of those holidays because the news is always happening. And it's been made uh even more so certainly in the last decade, 15 years, the advent both of cable news, 24-7 news coverage, and then the internet, right? Which makes it so that you're, and then all of us as consumers, have gotten used to having in our pockets a breaking news tool that at any moment, like if something's happening in the world and I can't pull out my phone and look it up, then I have, that doesn't feel okay to me as a person, right? We've gotten so used to instant gratification and the news cycle has responded to that. So because of the internet, because of devices, because of always connectivity. um The fact that we now have the internet on our phone and we don't have to worry about our data plans maxing out right like all of that kind of stuff and then social media which like thrives on this constant drip drip drip drip drip drip drip and then cable news responding to that by saying well gosh there's only three or four big stories today but we got to fill 24 hours with these three or four big stories so what are we gonna do we're gonna drip drip drip drip drip you know and we're gonna be like and then there's this and then there's this and then we're gonna get two new people on to argue about it and just kind of like constantly bombard you um So it's both the way that the landscape has changed, also driven partly by what it takes to make money, right? Because the internet has also gutted the advertising revenue model that so many media outlets, especially local media outlets, have relied on for so long. um All that money has gone over to Google and Facebook ads, you know, and that kind of stuff, right? um There's that there's the need to make money by responding to what the customer wants and what do we want as customers? immediate gratification instant updates if you tell me it's breaking I'm like Pavlov's dog and I'm like, what is it? is it? is it? You know news news news, right? Like so the frenetic nature of it is really it's inescapable I think both as a journalist and and as a as a consumer And anyone who's trying to do slow news is very countercultural. And that's part of what we're doing on top of mind is kind of saying, some of us want a little slower, a little more in depth, a little less sensational, a little more nuanced. A lot of us want that, but we don't always, A, know where to get it, or B, realize that that's what we want slash need in order to have a more productive relationship with information. Yeah, I agree with everything you said. it's one of the reasons we started this podcast. we started for me personally, I think it's grounded on two different principles. One, we just want to be examples to other believers of how you can interact with somebody that you don't agree with. But then secondly, and this is just my own selfish is like, I really just want to understand stuff like that's happening. So It's one thing to be alerted about breaking news of something that's happening here, there, wherever. ah And then it's another thing for me to be able to call somebody and say, hey, can you come on and talk to our audience and me personally about the safety of COVID vaccines for kids? We did that. We actually spoke to... Danny Avula, I think his name, he's a mayor of Richmond now, but he was Virginia's, whatever the main doctor, Surgeon General, is that what they're called? I don't know. But anyways, he was the head doctor for Virginia. And then we reached out to the head doctor in West Virginia. So two different doctors under two different, at the time it was Northam, two different, you know, political systems or political parties. And they both said, yeah, yeah, it's safe. So like, so I was like, hey, it must be safe. got two doctors to say on air that it's safe. So for me, it's somewhat personal, because I can actually use the information I get to educate my friends, my family, whatever. uh I say all that just because I'm curious, what's your motivation for continuing the work that you're doing of top in mind? And what are you hoping that your audience ah is receiving? Yeah, thanks for that. love how you both were like, Josh, you were saying I loved having a media badge. It feels so powerful and you never would have imagined, but there is something like, oh, this badge gives me license to talk to people. ah And ah will you and which I totally relate to. I mean, I love that is so one of the reasons that I do this is because I have questions and I really want answers and I love. I love being able to get those answers and then to share them with other people. So it's like what you're talking about. Well, um I think what has shifted for me since we turned that daily show, right, where it was every day we're talking about whatever's going on in the world. We're trying not to have biased conversations. I'm trying to bring balance to whatever issue is happening. If somebody came on and they had a really conservative viewpoint, then I would try to channel some of the liberal questions in order to sort of flesh out the conversation and vice versa. If it was a more progressive person, then I would try to be like, yes, but what about this and this, and try to bring some of the conservative viewpoints to the table, which was a great exercise for me. And I realized that not everybody is in a position where they are actively working to figure out what the other side of the issue might think, regardless of where they are on it. I was constantly, for my job, having to think, OK, if I were a conservative, what would I be thinking about this? If I were a liberal? I tend to be sort of in the middle on most issues. And so I had to really put myself in other people's shoes to try to bring that kind of balance to the conversation. I realized that those were the kinds of conversations that were the most energizing to me, the moments where I learned the most, when I would ask a question and get an answer that surprised me, because I'd never considered the world from that view before. And part of my awakening a number of years ago was that I was, I was feeling burned out. First of all, I learned that 40 % of Americans are news avoiders that we either admit to avoiding the news altogether or certain topics altogether or going on like extended news breaks. Right. um So I was like, OK, well, I'm not alone. There are a lot of people out there. What are the key reasons for that? For a lot of people, it's because it's depressing. It's overwhelming. A lot of people say it's because it feels biased. And that was. That was at the root, some of what was really my frustration was that it felt like no matter what channel I turned on or station or, know, that I was gonna get something through a lens that was either going to affirm my worldview or somehow convey to me that my worldview is wrong. And that felt very, it just was exhausting, right? The news was bad. And also, it just felt constantly like I was either right or wrong. having to like, this just felt like battle mode all the time. And so what I hope to, what we decided to try to do with Top of Mind, and it's a, we started off weekly. It's now every other week. We take one tough topic. I decided, okay, we need to take a topic that people are maybe a little afraid to touch, or they feel like they know everything they need to know about it. Like I'm working on one right now about birthright citizenship um that'll be dropping in about a week and a half. em super hot topic, right? People feel like they know, you you're either for unrestricted birthright citizenship and therefore you're for open borders and you're a bleeding heart, you know, liberal, right? Or you're against it, which means that you are a nativist and you are anti-immigrant and you're also probably a racist, right? There's like, that's it. There's two sides. And I don't want to hear that conversation play out. which is what you're gonna get on most cable news channels during a lot of coverage about that issue, that's exhausting to me. It also doesn't feel true to me. Surely it's not true. Surely there's more nuance here. And so what we try to do, what I've spent months trying to do on this particular episode is look for perspectives that are going to challenge us no matter what our opinion is. I think I know everything there is to know. Well, you're gonna come into this episode and you're gonna hear something you didn't know. about the history of how this came about, about how America stacks up to other countries when it comes to citizenship, about um how it affects people in ways that would surprise you. mean, one of the people I talked to, this was a story that blew my mind. And granted, it's a small percentage of the world, but it's also really got me thinking about citizenship differently. And that is a um man who was born in the United States. kind of by accident, he's an accidental American, he calls himself, didn't really realize he was an American. He was taken back to France with his dad. His parents divorced when he was 18 months. So he was a citizen by birth, grows up knowing he has dual citizenship, thinking though that eventually he's gonna have to choose. And of course he's gonna choose French. Like doesn't even speak English well enough to do an interview in English. And then all of a sudden he gets an email from, or like a letter from his bank that's like, you are in violation of US law because you haven't been. filing with the IRS because you're a US citizen and all of it. And he's like, I don't even want to be. And then they're like, OK, well, you can renounce your citizenship for $2,360. And he's like, heck no, I'm not going to pay $2,000 to renounce something that I don't even want, didn't ask for. And why did you force this on me, right? OK, for me, there are maybe 300,000 people in that situation in Europe at the moment. So it's a small percentage, right? But it really forced me to think about, Not everybody in the world is anxious to have this thing that I assumed is this great gift that everyone would want, of course. And so what does that mean? Why are we giving it to people who don't want it? Why would we force it on somebody? Which then makes me think, OK, but there's all kinds of questions. Anyway, so that's just one example of what I really want to hear on these tough topics and what we try to do. That's one of many voices in this episode, is try to poke some holes at the certainty that we have around any of these issues. to ignite some curiosity, to help us feel a little off balance about our position, because it's kind of in that that you start to, that I think we start to get to more clarity, that certainly we feel more empathy, and we realize that there's not just two sides and everybody's either bad guys or good guys, right and wrong. And I also think it's where we come to a more nuanced possibility for common ground, not always. And it's certainly not the goal to, We don't, in fact, we never end our episodes with a like, and they all lived happily ever after with a nice little bow at end. Cause these are tough topics that are very thorny. You may come away even a little more confused than you started because you thought you knew everything and now you don't. That's okay to me because if you're going to go then I want you to be so curious after you listen to an episode that you want to have a conversation with somebody about it. You can't stop thinking about it. And that the next time a story about birthright citizenship comes up, you're like, ooh, I want to read that because I'm really curious. I remember I was so surprised about X, Y, and Z that I heard on top of mind. Or you're going to go read a new book. You're going to do some more deep dive. You're going to ask different questions next time an election comes around and that issue comes up with your candidate. I really, I really appreciate that. And it gets to this idea in that, that I've asked several people, but knowing that you have gone through so many interviews, talked to so many people that disagree with you, I'm sure, right? Or where you had to, people where you had to basically, you know, you didn't really agree with what they're saying. But you had to talk to them and you had to ask questions. And now that's specifically right what you are trying to do, bring a more nuanced view and all of that. And I guess my question is in the middle of it when you're talking with people, when they say something that just just internally it rubs you the wrong way. Right. You're you don't you don't like it. You don't agree with it. Whatever it is. What inner checklist do you have that kind of keeps you being curious and being civil and wanting to know more as opposed to giving in to that part that just wants to prove yourself right or just argue just because it's an uncomfortable feeling having someone say something that, you know, doesn't align with your inner values. yeah. um First of all, I'll say that I am no professional at this. What I will say is that it's easier for me to do it when I'm doing it as a journalist, because I'm here with a certain amount of distance to be able to understand. So when they say stuff that disagrees with me personally, it's sort of like not Julie the My personal opinion isn't really on the table in that moment. It's my curiosity is front and center. It's just a lot easier to keep my curiosity engaged when I'm doing an interview for a story because I'm channeling, you know, I'm trying to do right by my listeners and make sure that I keep my curiosity on because that's the only way we're going to get to nuance. um What I have learned is that it's a lot harder to do that in my personal life. And I could tell you story after story of having failed. in conversations with siblings and with my mother and with people, right? um There's a couple of things that I have learned that are required in order for me to bring that skill over effectively. One of them is just the kind of straightforward emotional regulation skills, like recognizing that when I have that reaction, it's A, normal, because this is like survival, you know, fight or flight response. We are wired to feel to resist difference and to feel uncomfortable and even to want to fight when we feel threatened. And we live in a society that has trained us to feel threatened by opposing ideas, even when they're not literally the tiger that's going to try to eat us. It's just a very, very different view on abortion or guns. and yet it feels like it goes right to the core of who I am. That's something that we have trained ourselves as a social society to feel. um so now we're wired that way. So the first thing I have to remember is, I'm feeling this response, this normal like, I know what that is. remember, I recognize this. And hey, I'm not in danger. It's an idea I disagree with. I mean, I have to make that assessment. There are certainly moments where I am at risk and that's, and it's important to recognize that. But when we're talking about just encountering an idea that challenges us, I have to just take a moment of breath, do a little bit of like mindful, whatever, maybe even ask for a moment, be like, you know what, really, actually really wanna have this conversation, but I'm also, this is tough. And I know, I think you know that we disagree and I'm having a little bit of a... ah My emotions are spiking right now, but I really want to be able to have this and better understand your perspective. So can you give me five minutes and then we can pick this up? And then I'm going to like go breathe for a minute, right? Like whatever I need to do, but try not to respond in that moment if I have to. And then, and then I'm going to ask a question and I'm going to focus on asking questions that are not about the issue, but about the person and their experience. So. So A, I set the intention that I'm here to understand. I'm not here to win this argument because it rarely happens. I've never had successfully changed somebody's mind because I was so good at arguing over an issue like this in one encounter. I'm here to understand. I'm going to ask. I'm going to listen more than I talk. And I'm going to ask. I find I usually have to ask several questions in a row before I can even allow myself to start thinking about a response. Because that's what we want to do, right? We say, is we want to be, we're not listening to them, we're like formulating our rebuttal in our mind. And I have to let that side, I have to put that to sleep for a little while. And the only way I can do that is if I just decide, that's not part of this encounter. I'm here to ask questions, not to state my case. At least not for the first five minutes, or the next 10 minutes, right? Or maybe for this whole brief conversation. And then I just want to understand, and again, the thing that becomes really, really important to me is to try to ask questions. instead of saying, um why do you think that we need, I don't know, we'll just pick an issue, right? Why do you think that it's moral to abort a fetus, right? Instead of saying that, I would say, Would you be willing to, this is a really sensitive topic, and I know that we both feel strongly about it, most people do. I would really love to better understand how you've come to the, hold the views that you hold. Is there an experience you could share from your life that has shaped your view on this? Another one I really love is, where do you feel torn on this issue? My experience is that most of us don't have as, you know, sort of, binary of you on these tough issues. And that's what makes them so challenging. I feel torn on this topic, and I'd love to share some of that with you, but I'd really love to hear first, where are you torn on this issue of abortion and whether it's moral? Another one that I like to look at the journey, right, and think about, um have you always felt this way? Like, your feelings about this changed over time? I love to hear when someone says, you know, I used to be a lot more strongly pro- choice or pro-life, whatever. And then this thing happened. Or as I've grown older, or as I've had more kids, or now that I'm a grandma, or as I've, my best friend went through whatever experience, right? Like then they start to share, because that helps me, first of all, obviously, it's gonna be a way more interesting conversation than us trying to spout statistics and argument, like regurgitate arguments that we heard on cable news, right? But it also, reminds us that we're human, that I see this person as a flawed, complicated, interesting human being who I disagree with. But can I be curious about that disagreement? Hmm. What do you see the role of persuasion in all of this? Where do you see that? I guess, just to give you a little bit of context, mean, obviously, the question is simple enough, the context that might be helpful is that, Will and I do this, and we talk to a lot of people that either I disagree with a lot or he disagrees with on some fundamental issues. We try to just understand. That's what we try to do on this podcast. We try not to argue, which again, I don't really have anything against arguing really, except I'm not very good at it. That's probably the only thing I have against it. But I think that, and if it's what's the point of it, yeah, what's the point of it? And I think that's like, it does. And yes, and if you're Yes, and if you're doing well, right, you feel like you're doing good and presenting, right, then you're like, yeah, this is, I'm really smart. And yet the challenge that I'm facing is that, like, we're going through a book together, some guys from the church, from my church, Will and I are both in it. And it's on a controversial topic about same-sex marriage, and we're going through it. And... Coming down to this, this sense of like, okay, well, what is this really about what we're doing? Is it about trying to convince each other one way or the other? Cause we have different views within the group. Is it about convincing each other one way or the other? No, it's about understanding. It's about method. We talk about that. It's about how we come to know these things, kind of talking through that. And yet it seems like at some point, right, I guess what is the goal? Not that just talking is a bad goal, right? Or growing is a bad goal, but I want people to be persuaded or I want to be persuaded myself, right? I want one of the other ways. Yes, something like that. And I guess, what is your view on that and where does persuasion come into this? in even a democratic society in the way that you've engaged in it, where's persuasion in all this? What role should that Right. So it's so funny you ask that because that is the question that I ask every single time I interview one of these bridge builder types, know, or conflict uh mediation experts. And I've actually host another podcast where I talk with people about it's called Uncomfy, where I talk with bridge builders, but also regular folks who have experienced kind of leaning into uncomfortable moments with curiosity instead of shutting it down and kind of why and what they learned. um I keep coming back to this one story that sort of lit my fire on all of this a number of years ago. And it's the story of the abortion debate in Boston in the 90s. Have you heard this story before? Stop me if you've heard it. this is, um it's remarkable and it blows my mind every time I think about it. There's also a really great uh documentary available about it. I think it's on Amazon. I'm not sure it's called The Basement Talks. um So. Very long story short, 1990s was a big, big moment. There was lots of stuff going on at the Supreme Court around abortion. were like in Boston, especially, it was kind of the epicenter, a big Catholic um contingent, also very liberal politicians, state politics. And there were uh protests at abortion clinics every weekend. it was just things were really, really intense. And then there was, there were a couple of murders, an anti-abortion. individual who said he was inspired by the pro-life movement, killed a couple of women at a couple of Planned Parenthood clinics in Boston. So this is in the late, in the mid-90s. The city, there's a manhunt. It's just this big, traumatic, really terrible situation. And in that moment, a group called Essential Partners. At the time, they were called something else. I can't remember what it was called. They, a couple of mediators who had been leading dialogues. convinced, they went to three leaders of the pro-choice movement, three leaders of the pro-life movement. Those are the terminology that those two groups preferred. So you had someone from the the diocese was involved who was in charge of their pro-life efforts. And there was also the head of Planned Parenthood and the head of the Massachusetts uh something for life. I'm forgetting all of the names, right? But these are like the top six women, three on each side. who had never actually sat down in a room together and who really saw each other as like ideological enemies, if not literal enemies. And they were convinced that something's gotta change and it's gonna have to start with us. And so they met in secret, complete and total secrecy because they were afraid of what their supporters, their funders, their, you know, would say if they knew that they were meeting with these other, with the enemy. And they agreed to meet for a couple of meetings and it was all about what I was just describing. The approach that they took was, we're here to listen. We're gonna listen, we're not gonna chime in with our argument. We're gonna ask about one another's experiences. We're gonna break bread together first. And they met over the course of a couple of months and then they were so engaged. And I actually did an episode of Top of Mind about this and was able to speak to a couple of the women who were involved. And they talked about how they were so captivated by hearing. the other perspective, the other side so clearly and so eloquently, they'd never really been able to sit and listen closely to their ideological opponents on this issue. And it was captivating to them, and they came to care for one another. They continued to meet for six years in secret. Every couple of months, this group came to be very dear friends. To this day, they are still dear friends. And then they went public. And that was the big question was like, so what? Who? The thing was that nobody changed their mind. None of these six women budged at all. In fact, they even got more secure, more polarized, if you can even say, in their views on the issue. What changed was how they saw the other side. And because these women were, uh they were the tone setters of the debate. in Boston. They were the ones who were writing the press releases, going on the TV stations, making the statements about legislation that was going on. They were no longer able to or willing to use the same demeaning, dehumanizing, dismissive language or tone that they had so easily used in the past when referring to the other side. They were no longer They insisted on, they talk about being willing, know, like insisting on actually really engaging on the issue rather than doing sort of broad dismissals, you know, when somebody would post something in the, like do a letter to the editor or whatever, right? It changed the way they advocated. They all believed, two a one, that they became better advocates for the view, for their own view. And so, and there was not more violence. And that was their main goal, right? The tenor changed. And in fact, The public, uh one of the Boston Globe uh editors, one of the editorial page editors, opinion editor, wrote at one point sometime in that six years like, something has changed in Boston. The tenor seems to have, the rhetoric has toned down. Tensions are smoothing around this issue. Well, unbeknownst to him, it was because these women were meeting together and they were changing their tune. So. So all of that is just to say what I have learned and what I hear time and again when I ask people this, and I have experienced the same thing myself, that persuasion, I'm not a good debater. I was never on the debate team. I don't consider myself very persuasive, to be honest. And I am not easily persuaded either. I cannot think of very many times where I came in, dug in on an issue, and someone changed my mind because they had just the right words. doesn't happen that often. What does happen, I think, is a softening of hearts, a willingness to sit in conversation and listen. And I think that's what I hear. That's what these women said time and again. They're like, you know, the point isn't to change your mind. We're in this conversation, maybe in your book group, Josh. It's not about convincing or being convinced. It's about It's about getting better at being able to sit in curiosity around other views so that you don't get that threat response immediately come up. And it's in being willing to sit in that and to listen and learn how to share from a place of vulnerability your own perspective that's not about point A, point B, ergo C, you know, but it's really about here's my experience, here's what has shaped my view on this issue. Here's how I'm responding to this aspect of this book. Here's where I'm torn on this, that then it's really in those kinds of settings that I think hearts open up to the possibility of change. And you're not going to change someone's mind. They're going to have to change it for themselves. So I think all we can do is really sit. I think that's how conversion happens as well in a faith setting. You have to let the Holy Spirit do its work. And I think the same thing is true when it comes to um persuasion. It's about connecting on a human level, expressing ourselves authentically and vulnerably, which we don't see modeled very often in the world, certainly not on social media, and um allowing space for change to happen. Yeah, mean, what number one, that a preach um and uh number two, just as a as a warning, uh there's there's like a storm coming through my area. So you may hear some thunder or something in the background. if uh man, but anyway, so uh I am curious your thoughts about biases in the journalism industry, because I will tell you that like my thinking on on media bias, even journalist bias has come away since starting this podcast. I initially, I was kind of a rabbit, you know, make the articles as dry as possible, remove any sort of like human, like, let's just have chat, GPT transcribe the recording we've got, know, and put in the prompt to not like have any bias, you know, but But then, after talking to lot of journalists and just having conversations with them who are reporting on very, very difficult things, like I'll give you a for instance, one of the uh earlier journalists we had the privilege to talk to worked for Breitbart. His name was Brandon Darby uh and he covered uh basically like illegal immigration, but more so than that, he runs sort of a group called, I think it's called the Cartel Files. uh If my memory serves, it's basically they work with a bunch of Mexican reporters who work under pseudonyms uh so that way they don't get killed and then he takes the stories and they publish it on Breitbart. So whatever you want to think about Breitbart, that part is actually pretty darn cool. uh And that guy, he clearly has his own bias, but he's doing really, really good work, in my opinion. uh So what's... What's your take on journalists or media organizations having a bias? um I think it's impossible not to have one. And I think that's the thing that really kind of, when I get up on my soapbox, it's around this idea that people will say like, I just want unbiased news. And I'm like, first of all, doesn't exist. Second of all, that's not what you want. Because on point one, if I'm gonna be persuasive here, point one is that human beings have bias. And bias is rooted in the fact that we all have blind spots, that we all are seeing the world through through the lens of our own experience and our own training and our own fears and our own desires. So, so human, I mean, and even like, if you want to argue that chat GPT doesn't have bias, but then you have to ask, what was the bias of the humans embedded in all the information that it learned upon? Okay. So, so I think that bias is inevitable and it really, I think we've done ourselves. think journalism has done a self a disservice. And I think, I think I think the whole, like any talk about how what we want is unbiased is unrealistic. We can't deliver that. You can aim for balance, but bias is going to be inherent in the story. And it's not just about ideological bias. I think that the more, because ideological bias is often pretty easy to spot. Like we're pretty well tuned. they're using the word. Illegal, alien, that's a conservative bias, right? they're using undocumented immigrant. That's a liberal bias, right? We have trained ourselves very well in this fractured media environment to identify bias and to feel very frustrated when something feels like it has an ideological bias. What I usually say to that is, yup, and aren't we glad it's easy to identify? And what I'd like for you to do then is make sure that you're consuming news from a range of ideological biases. All right? So if Fox News is your jam, then I think you should also be reading the New York Times or listening to MSNBC occasionally or whatever it is. And also go search out some of these newsletters like Tangle and uh Frame Change that can give you sort of a like, here's what people are thinking on this side and on this side and here's some of the nuance in the middle. You can do some of that work, okay? So, ideological bias, yes, it exists. I think also when you say that you don't want it, when people are like, the news is so biased, or when they say, and then I ask them, so like, give me an example of what's biased. And then they will name the news outlet that is of the bias that's the opposite of their own. So if there are Fox News listeners that'll be like, I'm so frustrated at the mainstream media. NPR is so biased and New York Times is so biased or whatever. And I'll say yes, and so is Fox News. But you don't see it as biased or if you're an MSNBC, like you don't consider NPR biased if you're a liberal ah because it agrees with your worldview. So let's just get clear about this. Everything is biased and so are we. And we actually really want our news to agree with our worldview. So the problem isn't that it's biased. The problem is that we don't like it when it's biased in a way that's different from our own worldview. So that's point one. And what I really want, like on the political bias, like it's totally a thing. I encourage people to use resources like Ad Fontes or uh Ad Fontes Media or All Sides or the Media Bias Chart, whatever you're gonna use to figure out, okay, what is the bias of this resource? And then use that same. know, chart to go find something that's going to counterbalance that and then notice what's similar, what's different, who's paying attention to what. It just puts more onus on us as consumers. Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead. will say, so everything's biased. We also actually really like it. We want it. So we have to counter our desire when it comes to ideological bias. And then the final thing I'll say is that other kinds of biases I think are just as, um are even harder to identify. And they're also in some ways just as harmful. A bias, like as a journalist, we want to tell a really good story. Well, a really good story needs a hero. It needs a villain. A really good story needs a Needs conflict are really good. And so those things are inherent in good storytelling and when you're under pressure and when you're trying to sell Clicks right or sell subscriptions There is a real tendency for us to focus on the terrible like bad news is for sure a bias that journalists have because what? What reader what listener wants to you know read about all the great things that are going well in the world every day like we're just not you know, we are like evolved to focus on the bad stuff going on in the world. And journalists go overboard, I think, when we do that. um We're prone to simplifying the narrative because that's going to get more clicks. It's going to land better for a listener. You're in a hurry and you're scrolling. And so we're going to use some broad brush language or we're going to use the two most extreme viewpoints on the topic rather than the stuff that's a little more nuanced in the middle. Those... kinds of biases for conflict, for simplicity, and for bad news. Those are structured into the essence of journalism storytelling. And um I think they're equally important for readers and listeners and viewers to be aware of. Yeah. So if you were queen for a day and you could you can make one change to the way that we consume or produce news in this country, what would you do? So I'll just talk to consuming. And it's something that I try to do. um I try to, at least once a week, if not more often, read from top to bottom an opinion article that I disagree with right from the beginning. So I'll go to the opinion page of whatever paper. And I can usually tell by the headline, because it makes my blood boil a little bit, like, I really don't agree with that. And then I'll be like, okay, Julie, this is your exercise today. This is your curiosity muscle training, okay? And I'll read it top to bottom. um And I'll notice as I go when I wanna bail out, I'll notice ah when I'm trying to like, really gets me angry. I'll notice the questions. I'll try to take note of what would I ask this person if they were there right in front of me? What does it make sense to me? And why doesn't it make sense to me? And really kind of... engage with that perspective. And the reason why I think this is so valuable is A, I think we need to be constantly engaging with other viewpoints in order to really do justice to our own interests. If I want to advocate well for something that I care about, I really need to. Like the women involved in those abortion talks, I'm going to be better if I really understand on an intimate level other perspectives on that topic. The second thing is it's great exercise so that when I'm encountered, when I encounter this in the wild in, you know, at a church function or at the neighborhood block party or at my family gathering, I will have, I've been practicing on a weekly basis. This like, I really does agree. You know, I'm feeling all the feelings, right? I'm going to be better at doing it in person because I've been practicing it in the safety of my, my own reading, my earbuds, whatever. um So that's the thing that I would really recommend. It's probably the most useful practice I have. Awesome. Well, how can people, I guess, listen, watch, are you video or just audio at this point? of Mind drops every other week and it's an audio podcast, but we're on YouTube, we're on Spotify, we're on Apple. Look for Top of Mind with Julie Rose. um And then my other podcast that I've mentioned briefly is a video podcast. It's called Uncomfy and it's a conversation. It's shorter, we drop every week. um And you can find that on all the podcast platforms too. It's Uncomfy, sticking with moments that challenge us. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming by the show, Julie. Yeah, we really, really... I mean, we just have a special place in our heart for journalists, primarily because, I don't know, mean, like, you all just do really, really good work and hard work, and it's just like, it's a thankless job. And I will tell you one story. One of the reasons that... I have such a deep appreciation for journalists is because ah I started listening to this show on SiriusXM, the Julie Mason show, uh phenomenal journalists. She brings in all these journalists and she interviews them and talks to them and just has like these relationships with journalists and really kind of humanizes like the people that write the stories. And I've never really seen that because, you if you watch cable news, just like, get like the five second clip of them arguing or talking about the story, but it's not really the story, you know, and, and, and their normal voice. Like, that's one thing. I knew I couldn't do television because I don't have, I couldn't do like a TV anchor voice. Like, I can only just do my own voice. So it's going to have to be radio. I'm the same way and I'm probably too socially awkward to really be on TV. like when I got to know these reporters and then January 6 happened and you're getting all this like coverage from inside the Capitol from journalists just with their phones. And I'm like... a grief, you know? Like, here are these people just covering a really boring, you know, like, uh counting ceremony, and then now they're like wearing gas masks. And I just like, man, these folks are like teachers that they just don't get paid enough, probably. And they're kind of at the mercy of a system that doesn't, I don't think, value uh journalism, like quite as much as it probably should. So like, if I could say one good thing about the Trump administration, which I don't do very often. I do think their addition of the new media seat in the press secretary room is actually good idea because I think it allows for folks like yourselves. ah I mean, we did sign up for it. I don't think we were going to get called. But, would that be though to be in the press room? Yeah. It would really be cool. So if you're listening to this and you want us to be there, write your con... I don't know who they would write, but yeah, tell somebody. Yeah, call your student. Tweet it, tweet it, Trump. Truth at Trump. ah But yeah, so I just really appreciate just the work that folks like you do. And yeah, don't think you guys probably get... You probably don't hear it enough. Oh, well, um you know how it is. People are quick to tell you how you could do your job better. And I'm always happy to hear from people. But it is, it's definitely a thing to kind of put yourself out there and, you know, but we're just, we're all human and we're just trying to do, trying to, trying to help people to make my mantra is always like, as long as I'm helping people to be better citizens, kinder neighbors, and more effective advocates, like I don't care if anybody likes me. So. you. Well, thanks again. And to our viewers, yeah, and to our viewers, yeah, thanks for stopping by. I really appreciate you spend the time with us. And as always, keep your conversations not right or left, but up, and we'll see you next time. Take care.