Episode description

Isaac Saul, the founder of Tangle, joins host T.J. O’Hara on Deconstructed to talk about Tangle and media bias. Mr. Saul is an experienced political reporter and an accomplished journalist. In 2016, he was named by Yahoo News as one of the 16 people whose writing shaped the 2016 election, and in 2020, Forbes Magazine recognized him as one of the 1,000 “upstart entrepreneurs redefining the American dream.” His newsletter and podcast, Tangle, is an independent, ad-free, subscriber-supported newsletter that provides balanced insights into major political issues in an effort to combat media bias.

Mr. Saul suggests that most political reporting today has a slant, lacks context, lacks transparency, and fails to answer fundamental questions that readers want to know. That paradigm drove him to create Tangle.

He describes Tangle and the format that separates it from the pack. It covers the biggest political news story of the day in a unique way – by providing a range of excellent sources from the Left, Right, and Center so that readers can form a more informed opinion. He also includes a section called “My Take” that allows him to provide his own, unfiltered thoughts on the issue not to convince, but to distill the facts in a less argumentative way.

Tangle’s uniqueness doesn’t stop there. It also has sections that answer readers’ questions, “A story that matters” that covers a major story that’s being drowned out by media clickbait, a “Numbers” section that shares the most interesting numeric data from the last 24 hours, and a feel-good story under “Have a nice day” to “wash it all down” as Mr. Saul likes to describe it – all in about a 10-15 minute “read” because he knows your time is valuable.

Does Mr. Saul occasionally make a mistake? Of course, but he posts corrections at the very top of the page on the very next day. When was the last time you saw a publication do that?

T.J. then begins asking questions about a particular article about media bias that Mr. Saul wrote. The two explore whether the media is as biased as people like to suggest and, if so, what impact it has.

Mr. Saul describes elements of bias that exist and what may have fostered them. Some are systemic and have been embedded in the field of journalism for years. However, some are far more recent and have been enflamed by our Nation’s expanding political divide. He provides a recent and disturbing example of how two of the most elite newspapers shaped the exact same story in ways that might make one suspect they were describing two different incidents on two different planets. It offers a glaring example of why single-source news can lead to wildly skewed thinking.

If you see value in responsible journalism, you will see value in Tangle. Listen to the interview and then visit the website to begin to experience what political journalism should be.