The media is in a place of “malpractice,” according to NewsNation’s Chris Stirewalt, who says the industry has “chased clicks to the bottom of the ocean, and we have siloed the viewpoints in partisan and ideological ways in pursuit of that dwindling audience.”
Stirewalt is looking to change that. The former Fox News political editor by becoming a place for “aspirationally fair, good-faith questioning and analysis that’s not in a partisan silo,” with his new Sunday political news show.
Stirewalt currently serves as NewsNation’s politics editor and on Sunday he will kick off his new show as anchor of “The Hill Sunday,” at 10 a.m. ET. The show debuts on March 3 and will be available to CW stations across the country beginning on April 7.
“The premise for this show is that there’s a big underserved audience out there of people of a variety of partisan affiliations and viewpoints, who want analysis and questioning done in good faith and with a little humility,” Stirewalt told TheWrap in an interview, ahead of his Sunday debut.
“The Hill Sunday” enters into a competitive field of Sunday public affairs programs including NBC News’ “Meet the Press” and CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” which have been around for decades and garner loyal audiences.
Since joining NewsNation in early 2022, Stirewalt has covered midterm elections, major political events and led the editorial team involved in the network’s 2024 presidential town halls.
Stirewalt previously served as the political editor for Fox News, where he defended the network’s 2020 early projection that Joe Biden would win Arizona. He then departed Fox News after spending a decade with the network.
As of late, NewsNation has been expanding its network at a time when much of the media industry is cutting back and slimming down.
The network recently expanded its roster of political contributors, bringing in Political contributor Kurt Bardella, “Daily Blast Live’s” Lindsey Granger, A. Scott Bolden, and Denise Grace Gitsham. Additionally, NewsNation has recently expanded its weekend programming, launching a weekend edition of “Morning in America” with Hena Doba and shifting the network’s daytime lineup.
NewsNation is also seeing some promising ratings data, with the network’s primetime viewership up 12% in total viewers and 6% in the 25-54 demographic year-over-year. While still growing, the network has yet to reach the ratings prowess of cable news primetime programming.
Chris Stirewalt spoke to TheWrap about his new Sunday program and why journalists have to do better to deliver what Americans actually want to consume from their news content.
What are you looking forward to with the new Sunday program and why is it significant to launch ahead of a consequential presidential election?
There’s never a bad time to make a good show.
While the media landscape is overstuffed with content, we still have some substantial deficiencies around quality. The opportunity of doing a Sunday show is that historically we reserve something a little finer or more aspirational for Sunday morning, and that’s a decades-long tradition. While it’s certainly true that there’s no shortage of political bloviation these days of the 24-hour news cycle and constant hot take garbage analysis on social media, there is a place for aspirationally fair, good faith questioning and analysis that’s not in a partisan silo, or motivated by trying to help or hurt a particular party. But really with viewer service in mind, we can try to help the people who tune in have a leg up when it comes to understanding the world of politics, but also really for them to be better citizens, better Americans, and better neighbors.
You have covered elections for a long time, specifically on the data side of things. How are you planning to approach the coverage of your program as it relates to data analysis?
I will not be able to resist taking some deep dives in data. It is true. And there is a lot to unpack but I think when you unpack it, you can’t just be showing off how smart you are or how much you know or how slick your graphics are. I really believe that it has to be a tool to help people understand what’s going on and what their role is to play in it. Very often in the news business, we have allowed our own love of data and of the whiz bangs that actually impede normal people from understanding what’s going on in politics. We will try to demystify it and make it pertinent to get down to the essential parts. Every week we’re going to have a segment set aside to break down some parts of the data picture. Each week you’ll get to see us unpack something significant, maybe something that you’ve missed, or maybe something that’s everywhere, but that is misunderstood. That will be the goal.
Can you speak to the environment at NewsNation, particularly the partnership with The Hill and how the flow of information works from one organization to another?
It’s a huge benefit to NewsNation to be in partnership with The Hill, to be part of the same family. The most obvious benefit you will get to see frequently on my show because you’ll get to hear from people like Bob Cusack from The Hill who will be there to bring the same perceptive analysis that he brings in print and has brought elsewhere on television to us. Just having access to the people starts out as a success. Then after that, it works to the great advantage of a television network to have in its DNA, the written word and the depths of reporting and understanding that only print and digital reporters tend to get because they have such an immersive understanding of the stories.
Do you think there is widespread political news fatigue that’s happening? Is it just the oversaturation of the market or are people almost tired of these two candidates?
We’ve seen a discouraging decline in news consumption going back to about 2016. According to Pew data in 2016, a majority of Americans said that they were regular, frequent, or whatever descriptor but that they were up to date on the news, and that number has dropped 20 points. There are many reasons to explain why that is true and one of them obviously, is competition for people’s attention. There is there is an increasing wilderness of options for people to be distracted, delighted, or entertained and that’s obviously going to cut into people’s news consumption. Part of it is also fatigue, with just the exhaustion of this ongoing stress test that the United States has been living through, since really since the panic of 2008. It’s been it’s been a lot of rough sledding. So I certainly understand that part.
But I think another contributing factor is the malpractice of the American news business. We have chased clicks to the bottom of the ocean, and we have siloed the viewpoints in partisan and ideological ways in pursuit of that dwindling audience. And that’s just not good enough. That does not meet our public responsibility. It doesn’t meet our responsibility as citizens.
I think the premise of NewsNation, certainly the premise for this show, is that there’s a big underserved audience out there of people of a variety of partisan affiliations and viewpoints, who want aspirationally fair news, who want analysis and questioning done in good faith and with a little humility that acknowledges that they may not have all the answers, and that they’re listening. And I think part of why we have seen the decline in news consumption is the arrogance and the cynicism, of a lot of things in the news business, and I think we can do better.
