Angela Rye is launching a weekly YouTube series called Cite Your Source, and the premise is that the commentary business has stopped agreeing on what is true.
“I think the reality of it is we are living in a day and age where people think that there are two truths,” she said. “Our experiences can be different, but I don’t think that means that the facts can be.”
Rye was executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus before spending years as a CNN commentator, which puts her inside the business she is now checking. She describes the landscape as “two silos mostly, sometimes three,” with the same arguments running through commentator A, B or C, and says the arguing changed nothing. “But no minds were being changed,” she said. “Well, what happens when we do?”
The first episode puts three claims under review.
Her second argument is about cost. “If you’re putting information out, shouldn’t you want to be telling the truth?” she said. “As their platforms grow, the consequences of sharing that information increase.” She puts it more plainly elsewhere: “It’s pricey to share information that’s not right.”
What she asks of a viewer is small and specific. “Don’t just rely on one source; rely on multiple,” she said. And she wants the argument to happen somewhere other than a comment section. “I think being in conversation, just like we would with our families at a kitchen table, is abundantly important.”
