Rob Bluey, executive editor of The Heritage Foundation’s The Daily Signal, said conservative media has flourished within the last 15-20 years as a result of the legacy media becoming “too lazy and corrupt to report the news truthfully and accurately.”
On Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, Bluey discussed the rise of conservative media in the late 2000s and early 2010s, explaining how the combination of the rise of social media platforms and growing distrust surrounding legacy media allowed citizen journalists and independent outlets to flourish.
“Fifteen, twenty years ago, when we were seeing a fundamental transformation in the media landscape, you were also starting to see the emergence of social media…and then of course, bloggers and others who found the power of publishing on their own without having to go through these gatekeepers,” Bluey explained.
“There has been this tremendous change for the good, particularly in conservative media, where you have gone from maybe a handful or two established conservative or media organizations to now more than I can count,” Bluey added.
Bluey added that the change to the media landscape not only has created more competition for the legacy media at the national and state level but has also empowered citizen journalists to “hold their own local community accountable.”
Bluey attributed the success of citizen journalism and smaller outlets to billionaire Elon Musk’s purchasing of Twitter, now X.
“Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with Elon Musk’s personal politics, X is the place where you go for current events and political news,” Bluey explained. “Fortunately, we have somebody who owns the platform, who believes in free speech.”
Bluey added that the transformation of X under Musk’s acquisition has also put pressure on other social media outlets – including Facebook and YouTube – to implement policies supporting free speech from users to compete with X.
“I think having a competitor in the marketplace is a good thing,” Bluey explained. “It means that we probably find ourselves as conservatives with more options today than we certainly did four years ago. I remember colleagues who were banned from Twitter at the time because they didn’t use the correct pronouns of somebody or videos being censored and removed from YouTube because you would talk about the transgender issue in a way that violated its community standards.”
“Huge credit to Elon Musk for having the vision and foresight for doing what he did,” Bluey added.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Rob Bluey” by Heritage.org.
