True Journalism with Tom Martin and Richard Schreiber

Peter Maer covered the White House press pool under six presidents and never took the access for granted. A network correspondent from 1977 through his 2015 retirement — first for Mutual Radio and NBC Radio, then 17 years for CBS News Radio — he covered every presidential campaign, convention, and election from 1980 through 2012, and won the White House Correspondents' Association's Merr...

John St. Augustine says a voice told him to go on the radio. By his account, he began in 1997 with five unpaid one-hour shows at a small station in Escanaba, Michigan, and in 2006 he helped launch the Oprah & Friends channel on XM Satellite Radio as a senior producer, coaching Dr. Oz and Jean Chatzky from guests into hosts. This week he sits down with Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin to recoun...

Larry Bridgesmith spent more than thirty years representing employers in labor and employment litigation before deciding the courtroom was solving the wrong problem. An adjunct professor of law and coordinator of the Program on Law and Innovation at Vanderbilt Law School, and a faculty associate at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, he has spent the years sinc...

A federal case can turn on a single dictionary entry. This week, Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin trace a run of 2026 stories in which the underlying facts never moved — only the label attached to each one did, from a beach photo of seashells redefined as a threat to a war's death toll redefined by category. The conversation moves from Dr. Anthony Fauci's Fifth Amendment testimony before...

Katya Soldak learned how propaganda works as a child. Editorial director of Forbes Media's international editions, director of the 2020 documentary The Long Breakup, and author of the December 2017 Forbes essay This Is How Propaganda Works: A Look Inside A Soviet Childhood, she was raised in Kharkiv at the end of the Soviet Union and has spent her career reporting on how manufactured stories...

Barclay Palmer built the machines. As a founding senior producer at CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 and Amanpour shows and their digital platforms , designer of digital native video for the original CBS News streaming channel , and creator of Reuters TV , Thomson Reuters’ first public-facing platform with 11 programs, he spent two decades constructing the digital pipelines that now deliver news to most...

As the World Cup brings the world to America's doorstep and the country counts down to its 250th birthday, Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin sit down with veteran network news producer Rich Diefenbach — a man who has run editorial desks at ABC, CBS, and Fox News through the fall of the Berlin Wall, the O.J. Simpson trial, Oklahoma City, and September 11th. Diefenbach opens up about what actual...

Episode Description This week, Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin track a single 48-hour window when two branches of government showed their hand. On Tuesday, the Senate made history, passing a War Powers Resolution directing troop withdrawal from Iran by a vote of 50 to 48. By Wednesday afternoon, two senators had reversed course and the resolution was effectively dead. That same week, the Supreme...

EPISODE DESCRIPTION Tom Martin and Richard Schreiber sit down with veteran television news executive Shelley Ross for one of the most candid conversations this show has ever recorded. Ross recounts the moment in 1981 when Roger Ailes, then producing The Tom Snyder Show, propositioned her for a job in exchange for what he called a "sexual alliance" — and how she quietly recorded the conve...

Episode Description Before cable news, before smartphones, before anyone could fact-check a headline mid-sentence, a young reporter walked into a newsroom three days after graduation and got handed the biggest story of her life. In this episode of True Journalism, Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin sit down with a veteran journalist who lived through the moments most of us only read about in history...

Episode Description On this episode of True Journalism, hosts Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin are joined by Shelley, a 45-year network television veteran and Tom’s former executive producer at ABC News’ Good Morning America. Recorded as the FCC opened an investigation threatening ABC’s broadcast licenses over The View, the conversation confronts a media landscape unlike anything Shelley has seen...

Episode Description In this episode of True Journalism, hosts Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin sit down with Bryan Mattimore — innovation expert, co-founder of Growth Engine Company, and author of Trump's Playbook: His 50 Brand and Influence Strategies and How to Use Them Ethically — for a conversation that goes straight at the heart of how power is sold, how journalism is dying, and what it&...

Episode Description Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin sit down with Terence Smith — veteran New York Times bureau chief, CBS News Emmy winner, and author of Four Wars, Five Presidents — for one of the most grounded conversations about war, journalism, and political manipulation you will hear this year. Terry was in Jerusalem on day one of the Six-Day War in 1967. He ran the largest overseas bureau...

Episode Description Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin welcome documentary filmmaker Michele Mitchell — Murrow Award winner, former CNN Headline News political anchor, and director of The Uncondemned — for a conversation recorded on the night CBS News Radio went dark after 98 years. The through line Richard names up front sets the tone: the watchdogs are going quiet, and the criminals are getting pa...

Episode Description True Journalism | Season 2026 "Digital First Responders  Kim Karr on Protecting Kids in the Age of Social Media" Featuring Kim Karr — co-founder of Digital for Good, bringing 13 years of classroom experience and partnerships with major tech companies to create practical digital citizenship programs that empower youth as change agents in online communities. Two groundb...

Episode Description True Journalism | Season 2026 "The Mirror and the Machine: AI, Press Freedom, and the Erosion of Truth" Featuring Michael Ashley — Forbes Columnist, AI Philosopher, and Author of 50+ Books Five days ago, a sitting President of the United States reportedly handed his acting attorney general a stack of news articles with the word treason written in Sharpie on a sticky n...

True Journalism | "The Invisible Toll" Hosted by Richard Schreiber & Tom Martin | May 8, 2026 Episode Description When governments scrub the wounded from their own casualty lists, when a cabinet secretary testifies to Congress that nearly a trillion dollars in Medicaid cuts simply don't exist, and when the United States falls to 64th place in global press freedom — sandwiched be...

True Journalism — Episode Description Hosts Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin sit down with newspaper veteran Steve Patterson — 40 years, 13 chains, former CEO of America's largest community newspaper group, and host of the Galveston Bay Bizcast — for a sober, hopeful conversation about what journalism was, what it has become, and where it goes next. Recorded the day a federal judge tossed a $...

This episode of True Journalism welcomes one of Washington's most meticulous chroniclers of power the morning after the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Hosts Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin are joined by Chris Whipple — Emmy and Peabody winner, and the man who has put every White House chief of staff since Nixon on the record. Whipple's 10,000-word Vanity Fair profile of Susie...

In this episode, Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin dismantle the synthetic reality of April 2026. The week began with a "lightning bolt" ceasefire announcement that calmed the markets, but as the 88-minute deadline passed, the reality on the ground told a different story. From the closing of the Strait of Hormuz to the continued bombardment of Lebanon, we analyze why official statements a...

Episode Summary In an era defined by the "Digital Mask," your eyes are no longer reliable witnesses to the truth. This week on True Journalism , veteran broadcasters Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin peel back the layers of a world where a server in a basement can tank global markets for less than fifty dollars. We are moving past "funny videos" and into the reality of financial...

This episode of True Journalist marks a somber turning point in media history. Hosts Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin are joined by Henry Lenz , a legendary CBS engineer and Peabody winner who worked with giants like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow . Together, they witness the end of an era as CBS News Radio announces its termination, while simultaneously dissecting the "manufactured opt...

Description:  In an era where "news" is often a byproduct of algorithmic outrage and synthetic fabrication, veteran journalists Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin return to the bedrock of reality. In this edition, we dismantle the "Digital Mask" of 2026, where unauthorized deepfakes move markets and government briefings are replaced by "feelings." From the strategic pur...

Description: Richard and Tom dismantle the "curated" narrative of the Iran invasion, "Operation Epic Fury." As the administration highlights "smart bomb" precision, the hosts reveal the suppressed human cost and the first American casualties. They analyze the growing hostility toward the press—from the berating of reporters at the White House to the resignation of vet...

Imagine this: You’re scrolling through your feed and see a video of the Secretary of State. He’s at a podium, the lighting is harsh, he looks exhausted—and he’s announcing a sudden, massive shift in nuclear posture. Within seconds, the global markets tank. Gold spikes. Your retirement account drops 4% before you’ve even finished your morning coffee. But here’s the reality: That man was never at th...