Salem Media Group Vice President of News and Talk Programming Tom Tradup joined The Mike Gallagher Show Monday to detail recent dealings the broadcast company has had with the Associated Press, and its perceived biases against conservatives.
Tradup noted difficulties Salem has had with the news organization began last year with the Virginia gubernatorial election. He said “they have a bias that is unbelievable. Last year when Glenn Youngkin was running against Terry McAuliffe for Governor of Virginia, Mike, hot race, everybody in the country was interested in it, and (the) AP covered it like crazy. Until there was suddenly a surge for Glenn Youngkin and it looked like he might actually win this thing.
“When we reached out to them to confirm that they would be covering election night at both headquarters, I got a note from them saying ‘Well, we’re planning on having cameras at candidate election night party barring any unforeseen emergency news event’. Which is kind of like if you’re Channel 2 in Biloxi, Mississippi, ‘Yeah, we’ll cover the Governor being in town unless there’s a fire down the street’.”
After saying the AP was unhappy with a column he wrote for TownHall.com about the inherent biases inside the news gathering organization, he brought up a more recent example.
“We wanted to know if they were going to feed us audio from President Trump last Wednesday speaking as the keynoter at the Hispanic Leadership Conference in Miami. They’re always calling him Mr. Big Lie and Mr. Border Wall, implying that Hispanics don’t like him. Well here he is addressing the Hispanic Leadership Conference, and all of the sudden the AP hemmed and hawed ‘We might, we might not’ and I said I need some answer. It ping-ponged back and forth to umpteen people in New York and Washington and our AP representative in Chicago and at the end of the day, no, they decided not to cover it.
“They sent me this — I just have to read this little portion of it — bizarre explanation they wouldn’t be covering it because of ‘AP Standards. As with all stories AP covers, our editorial discusses and evaluates to ensure they are held to AP standards. For Trump, this is important because we want to be sure we are putting out factual information. After the 2020 election especially, Trump has been known for spreading falsehoods about the US election results, which we want to be careful with’. So, in other words, they don’t want to cover Donald Trump speaking at the Hispanic Leadership Conference because he might spread falsehoods in AP’s world.
“I said to them ‘Ok, what happens if he announces he’s running for President again. Does that mean you’re just not going to cover his campaign?’ This is absurd. It’s gone on forever with the AP, and they just don’t like it when someone calls them out. In fact, our representative for AP — I feel bad for the guy because he gets trapped between me and the bigwigs in New York, he has to convey my dissatisfaction as a client to them — he’s basically saying ‘Hey look, we’re trying our best, but we can’t always do what you want’, but that’s not the point.”
Tradup did admit Salem Media Group needed the Associated Press, saying “we can’t be everywhere at once”.
Dave Dybas
October 12, 2022 at 4:36 pm
For a Radio Group that pushes a Republican/Conservative agenda and spends extensive energy condemning anyone who doesn’t … it’s apparent you do not want like the “consequences” of your actions. I hope you understand that others can object to your perspective and act in their own manner as well. You want others ( AP ) to treat you with equanimity but you choose not to present yourself in the same manner ? How foolish.