On MS NOW's On the Line with Alicia Menendez, Angelo Carusone says “our media diet” is “the lens through which we see and experience the world”

Written by Media Matters Staff

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From the June 25, 2026, edition of MS NOW's One the Line with Alicia Menendez

ALICIA MENENDEZ (HOST): Angelo Carusone, is it strange to you to hear the thing that you have been shouting from the mountaintop being repeated back to you by folks who are now rethinking their own media consumption and their association with MAGA?

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, I mean we call ourselves Media Matters for a reason, because, you know, we all live in a story. It's the thing that connects us, it helps us shape our civic life. It's the lens through which we see and experience the world, is our media diet. I think people sometimes think about it as just news, but it really does help figure out who you are and what your place is. And yeah, every data, every study that's ever been done on this shows that that's the case, that if you take a break, you know, there was a big study that happened a few years ago where people who are diehard Fox viewers didn't watch it for a month. All of them, 100% stopped believing in election denialism. Their positions about the Republican party changed, all sorts of things. They were less likely to be susceptible to conspiracies. That was only 30 days. And it's not that they became converts, but it's that you create space for other stories of facts to get in there, for conversations and new connections to be built. So yeah, it isn't — I'm happy when people see it. I think it's something we all kind of know and feel. And the bubbles are far bigger than just the algorithms. It's not just those online, it's also these offline spaces, which is part of what made MAGA so intense is that you were getting it not just in your news diet, or in Newsmax, or online, but then you were getting it at these rallies, at these events, in your peers, and your bubble became increasingly smaller in all of your interactions, which was intensifying and calcifying that worldview.