The Charlatan (TC): How did you get started, and how has the media landscape changed since you began?
Jayar Jackson (JJ): I started in ’02 when it was just a radio show. But now it’s transitioned into the online presence we have. The way that social media has gone, people put basic quotes and videos to now having opinions.
When we were covering the presidential debates I tweeted from there about it. It’s different than watching the debate at home. I ended up with 150 retweets. It was like, “Man, it’s bigger than I thought.”
It’s amazing. As long as you get the right core of people, they want to know what you have to say.
TC: How would you describe your style of delivering news, and what do you think the best strategy is for delivering information to people?
JJ: From our point of view the best strategy is to have a variety of voices. We have Cenk [Uygur], we have Ana [Kasparian], we have me. But we really cover a broad range without trying to. A lot of television, they want to hit a core.
If we do have a different point of view, you may connect. We’re not going off the teleprompts; we’re not reading things. We’re really saying what we feel and it ends up giving a good sense of authenticity to what you’re doing. And people can tell.
TC: Do you think there’s a perception that YouTube isn’t a credible source for news?
JJ: There is but then there isn’t. It depends on who you are. YouTube has become in a lot of ways what TV is. There’s the reputable ones that people know in other mediums. It’s about having enough people that have really confirmed or backed up your identity. I guess that’s the hard part- we’re more reactionary. On Twitter what everyone does is react to what’s happening. We have to defend that too. I think that’s part of what we’re setting out to do is, even if we see something that fits with our belief system, we have to go back and say,“Is this for real?” I still have to go and look for reputable sources and see what’s happening even if it’s written by websites five times. But you don’t know what their objective is, or what their agenda is.
And we’ve missed a couple. Whether we’ve believed something or went at something at a different angle and it ends up not being what we thought. It’s owning up to it and then people know that you’re really trying to be honest with them. It’s a constant battle I think. Because there’s always people that could be just looking in their webcam and saying crazy things.
TC: Cenk Uygur said “YouTube is the new television.” Do you agree with this statement? What do you think the appeal of YouTube is that we can’t get from TV?
JJ: I agree to a point. He’s been saying that for a while. What we can do is the on-demand thing. Whenever you see things changing in TV that mimics what happens on the Internet, those are the things that television has finally realized, it took them a while, that work. People have different schedules. People don’t always want to just watch something when they can’t watch it or just miss it and say, “I’ll get it next time.” That’s the whole thing with TVOing that came before. People’s schedules are different. You have to really cater to everyone else.
It’s the information part of it. Getting what you can when you want to get it. And there’s real people there. As I was saying the hard part of the authenticity, or the realness of people, or their credibility is hard. But people get to see something that maybe that they would’ve never seen or heard from that point of view, people like seeing that.
And television kind of selects people, and it’s the same people. Some hosts have horrible ratings or they just weren’t good at it and they end up losing their show. They’re on another show in a year. And you’re like “How did this guy get another show, I thought he sucked?” So TV keeps recycling the same people and here you never know who’s going to show up and who we’re speaking to.
TC: Are your guests more relaxed in interviews because of TYT’s informal style?
JJ: To an extent yes. First of all it goes both ways. Sometimes when people come in there’s a comfort level and they feel like they can do whatever they want and it’s cool. I think anyone wants that when they’re interviewing someone. But then there’s also the reputation. Either they don’t come on, which happens a lot, or they come in very cautiously. “I know where you guys are coming from, so I know how this works.”
I think it was ’04, when we were still doing radio, and we went to the Republican convention and the congressmen would walk by. We were known but we weren’t known.
There were people who’d want to stop and talk and we’d try to grab them for an interview and then their handlers would say, “Oh no, no, no, no you don’t want to,” and then drag them away. It was awesome. Like it was horrible, because we didn’t get much play, but it was awesome because we were like, they know that we’re not going to conform to the parameters that they’re used to interviewers conforming to. Awesome. But it’s hard because then you’re not getting those interviews that everyone wants to see.
TC: How do you find sources and who agrees to come on your show?
JJ: First off, people who didn’t realize who we were and then they’re in the building and go “Dammit.” But really, because we speak so much the guest roles . . . fluctuate over the years. Sometimes we have guests that agree with our point of view who are very happy to come on. It kind of goes back and forth.
TC: What have you done that are you most proud of ?
JJ: I had hope with the supreme court with Sam Alito when he was appointed. We did a 99-hour filibuster show because we wanted the democrats and the congress to have filibusters and they wouldn’t. So we did a “Live, On Air Filibuster” show. And that’s actually the point that kind of put us on the map because we started having more people that were known, democratic hosts that were known. They helped us out because . . . we couldn’t go straight 99 hours. I mean, commercial-free.
We just took calls and talked to people about anything, as long as we were talking. I hated when we did it because we had to be here for 99 hours and it started on a Friday. So I didn’t have a weekend. I mean at the end of it, I was kind of a zombie but I was like, “This is kind of awesome.”
If you’re on television you can’t say ok we’re going to take over the studio and sit here for 99 hours and do this show. They’d say, “What for? To waste our money?”
It’s obviously not been an accomplishment because we still have supreme court justice Samuel Alito. But it garners attention and activism.
TC: Online news channels such as TYT are subjective and informal. What do you think the impact of this style of journalism is?
JJ: Any time something new gets picked up I always hope it doesn’t go too far because then you kind of lose what you started with. And I’ve never openly thought that this could happen with our medium but I think it’ll make news more relaxed. Try to be more cool. When you have usually stuck up bits of the board that have no personalities being on TV. On Twitter even, they know their audience or they know the reach of audience … they assume it’s the younger group they want to appeal to.
I think, as it’s already happened, news will get more laid back and chill and will be about actually saying what you really want to say. And it also gives room for more mistakes, more room for people to say things they wouldn’t usually say because they prepare their remarks more. Get more real. Even if their point of view is sometimes bad and that’s what we want. But I don’t want to go so far as to not remember what it’s like to have a responsibility of trying to get things right. Especially now with the Internet age, it’s so fast to get information out there. The rush to do that may take away a little bit of the truth. I hope that doesn’t happen.
People come in and we’ve grown this group so much. It’s oddly competitive but we have much fun.
Whenever we see someone recognizes us I always ask them how they watch us, whether it’s on TV or the Internet. A large majority say on the Internet. I always try and thank them because literally, we wouldn’t be doing this if people weren’t watching.
