We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Julie Mastrine. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Julie below.

Julie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?

AllSides is in the media and technology industry. We see a lot of things that corporate America gets wrong when it comes to the dissemination of media and information technology. With profit and advertising eyeballs as a driving goal, we’ve seen news media devolve into partisan fights, mudslinging, and endless manipulation. They keep people inside one-sided filter bubbles, hiding alternative views and perspectives, especially views that don’t suit their own agendas.

Our industry does not treat Americans as intelligent individuals capable of assessing multiple views and making their own decisions about the facts — instead, the facts are being spun and twisted to propagandize them.

A democratic society will always be one that relies on persuasion instead of might. But media that was once meant to be a neutral arbiter of information is now operating under the guise of neutrality while really pushing a partisan agenda.

Traditional journalistic standards exist to act as a check on our own loyalties and biases, but these standards are being discarded by journalists who believe the American people cannot be trusted to make their own decisions with the facts; they worry Americans may come to a different conclusion than they would like.

The result is tanking trust in American journalism. If journalists would trust Americans, Americans could trust journalists again.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I was working as a PR representative for a partisan advocacy organization when I realized that a lot of our campaigning relied on obscuring all the facts, and leaning on journalists to push our narrative instead of asking thoughtful questions and engaging in critical thinking. I realized that media bias was a huge problem, with journalists parroting agendas rather than asking questions and engaging in critical analysis.

By discovering the issue of media bias, I discovered AllSides. I was one of the very first employees and dove into creating marketing content that would expose the issue of media bias and encourage people to use our balanced newsfeed to get a broader view of left, center, and right perspectives.

Since joining AllSides, our footprint has grown significantly — the AllSides Media Bias Chart™ alone has been viewed tens of millions of times online, printed in academic textbooks, and is regularly referenced in classrooms — and we have expanded our services to include actually training journalists to avoid writing with bias, and doing bias audits of newsrooms to provide feedback and correction.

I am most proud of the work we have done to help editors and journalists see bias in their writing and course correct in a way that shores up reader trust. We helped a newsroom in one of the largest media markets in the country to go from a Lean Left bias to a Center bias. This was all through applying AllSides’ multipartisan bias analysis and helping the newsroom to make changes that would provide a more balanced product. It’s one of our proudest achievements.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

AllSides has built a strong reputation by always been even-handed and honest. We don’t nitpick one side over the other — we expose bias wherever it exists. We trust our readers by giving them all the facts they need and letting them decide the truth for themselves. We don’t pick winners and losers or browbeat people with our version of reality.

I believe this has built our reputation as a trusted source of information and news. We show readers we respect and trust them, rather than manipulating them into going along with our own desired outcome.

In addition, the multipartisan nature of our founding team and staff, and our transparency about our own individual biases, compels trust. We have specifically designed our bias analysis and editorial teams to balance input from people on all sides of the political spectrum because we know the downsides of a one-sided view or a biased team or groupthink. People can see that, and as a result, they turn to us for information because they trust us to be honest.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I believe heeding the signals of your gut — your intuition — is something that creative types understand, but that non-creatives struggle with it. There are people who assess their next move by looking at things only with the rational mind, but creatives have an easier time consulting our “other brain” — the gut, which has a truly mystical quality — to make decisions.

Tapping into that intuitive force is truly important, and can only be done by silencing the mind and listening to the pull of the body. While it might sound a bit woo-woo, reality isn’t all about numbers, logic, reason, and rationality, and tapping into the wisdom of the body can help to guide us.

Contact Info:

• Website: allsides.com
• Instagram: @allsidesnow
• Twitter: @allsidesnow

Image Credits
Julie Mastrine AllSides, Inc.