Hi, honestly, listeners. I'm not sure if you've heard, but there's an election. It's happening on November fifth. I want you to join us for a marathon Free Press Live, hosted by me, Michael Moynihan, Batya Anger-Sargan, and an absolutely incredible, epic lineup of guests, including, I'm taking a deep breath, Abigail Schreier, Anna Caspari, and Andrew Yang, Anna Cacci, and Ben Dominich, Brianna Wu, Katherine Harrodge, Coleman Hughes, Dasha Nekrasscova, Eli Lake, Eliana Johnson, Frank Luntz, Frannie Block, Jonas Sarah, John McCarter, Kat Rosenfield, Camille Foster, Konstantine Kissen, Marion Williamson, Mark Halpern, Matt Contineni, Matt Welsh, Michael Schellenberger, Nancy Rommelman, Nelly Bowles, Olivia Ryan Gold, Ollie Weissman, Peter Savandik, Ricky Schlott, Richie Torres, Roy Tashera, Selena Zito, Shane Smith, Sorba, Marie Vivek, Ramaswami, and actually more. Our coverage will begin on November fifth, of course, starting at 07:00 PM, EST. We'll livestream on X and on YouTube, so click the link in the show notes and select Notify Me to receive a reminder once we're live. I'm told there will be drinking games, and I'm looking forward to it. We'll see you then. Today's episode was made possible by Ground News. America's trust in the media has been on a long and steady decline, especially over the last few years.

If you listen to this show, you know that's something that we care about and talk about a lot. Mainstream media often have their own agenda, which leads, and we've seen this many times, to bias coverage, public polarization, and ideological bubbles that reinforce readers' opinions rather than challenging them. That's why Ground News is so important. Their app and website allow us to access the world's news in one place to compare coverage with context behind each source. Take the story of major news outlets like the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times opting out of endorsing a presidential candidate. Ground News found more than 300 headlines covering it, and there was backlash from both sides. They analyzed stories from business insider, Slate, the Center for the National Interest, and many others for their biases and blind spots. Reading the news this way helps you see discrepancies on how certain topics are covered or not covered at all, so you can think critically about what you read and make up your own mind. Check it out at groundnews. Com/honestly to get 50% off the Groundnews Vantage Plan for unlimited access. Ground News is female-founded and subscriber-funded. By subscribing, you're supporting transparency in media and our work in the meantime.

The Credit Card Competition Act would help small business owners like Raymond We asked Raymond why the Credit Card Competition Act matters to him.

I'm Raymond Huff. I run Russell's Convenience in Denver, Colorado. I've ran this business for more than 30 years by keeping it going as a challenge. One of the biggest reasons I found is a credit card twice fees were forced pay. That's because the credit card companies fix prices. It goes against the free market that made our economy great. The Credit Card Competition Act would ensure we have basic competition. It's one of the few things in Washington that both sides agree on. Please ask your member of Congress to pass the Credit Card Competition Act. Small businesses and my customers need it now.

For more information on how the Credit Card Competition Act will help American consumers save money, visit merchantspaymentscoalition. Com.

Merchantspaymentscoalition.

Com, and contact your member of Congress today. Paid for by the Merchants Payments Coalition, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee, merchantspaymentscoalition.

Com.

From the Free Press, this is Honestly, and I'm Barry Weiss. Once upon a time when newspapers covered both sides of an issue, editorial endorsements may have moved a voter in Michigan or persuaded some undecided soul like my mom in Pennsylvania. But those days are long gone, which may explain the astonished outrage this election season when a couple of corporate media papers, like the Los Angeles Times and then the Washington Post, decided not to endorse a candidate. The responses to that were apoplectic. Karen Atia, of the Washington Post, wrote that she and her colleagues were betrayed by the lack of endorsement of Harris. Newsroom staffers at the Post publicly posted their disagreement. One wrote that her own parents unsubscribed from the paper. Others, trying to stave off the wave of cancelations, suggested that those angry about the lack of endorsement should cancel their Amazon Prime accounts instead as a way of sending a message to their owner, Jeff Bezos. The Post has reportedly lost 250,000 digital subscribers or 10% over this decision. But the most delicious publication endorsement fight of this cycle happened at the Nation magazine. The The Left Wing magazine endorsed Kamala Harris, which apparently outraged the interns, who then wrote an op-ed of their own, arguing that the endorsement was a, quote, unearned and disappointing step given the Biden-Harris administration's support for Israel.

Why do I say all of this? Because we've received a lot of questions about whether and who we'd be endorsing in this election. Given the Free Press's mission of not telling readers and listeners what to think, But in rather giving the audience the information necessary to make their own decisions, we're not going to be endorsing a candidate this year. We did, however, poll our staff at a recent retreat. We didn't do it with the expectation, of course, of sharing the results. We did it on account of a relentlessly curious podcast producer, the executive producer of Honestly, who took advantage of the fact that we were all trapped together on a boat on the Hudson River. But those results seem worth sharing now, partly Mostly because they are not results you will find in any other American newsroom, but mostly because we're continually told that America is divided into Reds and Blues, into MAGA and the resistance, into protester and counterprotesters. Well, that's just not been our experience. The staff of the free press is split almost exactly three ways in this election between Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and well, Neither. People who are abstaining, writing in their preferred candidate, or who remain undecided.

Yes, there are still undecided. In other words, our editorial staff is split, just like the country that we write about. We also have widely ranging views, not just about the candidates themselves, but also about the stakes and the meaning of this election. Some think democracy is on the ballot and are profoundly fearful of Trump without the guardrails of men like H. R. Mcmaster and Jim Mattis. Others are far more sanguine, making the case that we endured four years of Trump and four years of Biden-Harris, and the Republic survived. My point is that at the free press, it's okay to be liberal, conservative, or politically non-binary. And though it shouldn't be, having a newsroom that reflects the politics of America has become extraordinarily unusual. At the New York Times, my friend Adam Rubinstein used to joke that the only people at the paper who voted for Trump were the delivery guys from Staten Island. Like all jokes, it was an oversimplification. There were also the plumbers, the electricians, and the porters at 628th Avenue, New York Times headquarters. It's not just the Times, of course. It's the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, CNN, ABC. It could go on.

At NPR's DC headquarters, as Ori Berliner reported earlier this year in our pages, he found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None. Indeed, you'd be hard-pressed to find a mainstream media outlet outside of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal that doesn't have a newsroom and often an opinion staff that thinks as one. Which is to say, the people whose job it is, is to tell you about the world in all its complications and contradictions, have the same view about almost every important issue in American life. At the New York Times, every last columnist, even those who are supposed to be the Conservatives, oppose Trump's election. At the Washington Post, Journalists fear over Bezos's squashing of the Harris endorsement isn't because their independent journalism is being harmed. It's because like most of their Brewer in the mainstream media, they think it's imperative for Kamala Harris to win. According to the Beacon, during a heated meeting between Washington Post staff and editorial page editor David Shippley, one editor blurted out, One thing that can't happen in this country is for Trump to get another four years. But the thing is, half of the country wants Donald Trump for another four years.

Whether he wins or he loses, half of America is voting for him. So isn't it just a little bit strange that the institutions that talk the most about diversity and inclusion can't stomach anyone whose views aligned with half of Americans? At the Free Press, we flip this dynamic on its head. The fundamental value we share here with each other and with our readers and listeners, is a commitment to seeking and telling the truth, which allows us to disagree without disrespecting one another. We share an understanding that the truth isn't something you bring back like a moon rock and put under glass, but rather the best answers you can get under changing circumstances in an ever-shifting world, and that those answers are always subject to revision in the face of new information. We share the view that politics need not be a team sport. We share the view that our vocation as journalists is not about ushering readers to a political conclusion, but to tell stories that reflect the complicated nature of issues that are so often presented as simple and settled. If we knew in advance who or what was deplorable, we wouldn't need journalism at all.

Most importantly, all of us share a view that there is not an enemy within among our fellow Americans, nor do we believe in referring to any of our fellow citizens as garbage. We're also grateful, grateful for our privilege, our privilege to live in a free country. My colleague, Tanya Maria Lukyanova was born in Russia. She became an American citizen just a few months ago, and will vote this year in her first free and fair election. Here's what she recently wrote, When I step into the voting booth, I'll think about how lucky I am to be here, where my vote is not just an act of resistance, but a genuine opportunity to make a choice. We know that our readers and our listeners and our viewers don't come to the free press to be told what to think. You're here Because like us, you're of independent mind and spirit. We're proud of that fact, and we owe it to you as much as to ourselves to try with all of our might to restore a culture where arguing, debating, persuading, and disagreeing agreeing, as opposed to damning and silencing, are the norm. If we can't sit next to colleagues who are voting differently, how can we sit next to them at our dining room tables, or on the subway, or on a jury?

I can think of nothing more meaningful and important than building a publication and a community that aspires to that. There is nothing more exhilarating than discovering, not only in our newsroom, but also in the world of the free press, that this is still a country of free people.