BNM Writers
Sara Carter Digs For The Underreported Stories
“We focus on a number of different underreported stories. We’ve released two episodes and are getting ready to release the third.”

Published
12 months agoon
By
Jim Cryns
Sara Carter is an apex predator. As fierce as a mother badger defending offspring. Carter can intimidate the crap out of you, and will have no respect for you if you don’t hold your own ground. She speaks with such force, I urged her to avoid having a stroke.
After talking with her for half an hour, I found a chink in her armor. It took all that time to unearth her softer side.
“I love The Sara Carter Show,” she exclaimed. “It’s serious, funny, and we have great guests. Luis Elizando is a fantastic guest. Our show isn’t all political. Luis is a friend of mine and he’s talked to us about the mysteries out there we have no answers to. I like to have Gordon Chang on, to talk about what’s going on with China.”
Carter isn’t opposed to bringing on a chef to the show sometime. Deal with topics that aren’t always so dire and distressing.
“Maybe I’ll have Donald Trump on the show and give him the Pepsi Challenge,” Carter jokes. “See if he can identify his beloved Diet Coke.”
Carter said when she can, she likes to take her show to a lighter area.
“I love talking with attorney general Mark Brnovich about his being a Star Wars fan. I am too. We have Star Wars themes around the house. I love all the movies in the series. That’s something people might not know about me. I love the show What on Earth on Discovery. I love the series and the science. Fascinated by the universe. I love science fiction. I’m not into the mystical stuff, but I love Star Trek.”
Carter also loves to cook and knows all her mother’s recipes. All the Cuban cooking. I asked if she could make a good tamale. She can’t. But Carter said a lot of families do make very good tamales, recipes that are revered. Families take pride in their tamale recipes.
Carter is also a serious actor. The last big role she performed was Portia in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.
“That was my favorite role,” Carter said. “I also played Laura Manion in Anatomy of a Murder.” In the film version, this was the role played by the beautiful Lee Remick.
“I made choices in regards to playing Laura. I lost myself in that character. In the movie she was portrayed as a sexy siren. Wore revealing and provocative outfits. I chose to wear modest clothes as my costume. Sexy, but not over sexy. I was attractive, but not over the top attractive. I kept it in the center. I used to do plays all the time in college. I love reading. I just finished. Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne. It’s a brilliant book.”
Now we can visit the hardcore Carter. The apex investigator that is reluctant to take prisoners.
Carter is an award-winning investigative reporter who says she ‘takes back the story.’
Each week Carter shares her unique perspective as a mom, a wife to a wounded war hero, and a reporter who’s told stories from the darkest corners of the world.
Dark Wars: The Border is Carter’s 10-part series on the border between Mexico and the United States.
“I’m so excited about my new podcast and we’ve been talking about it for quite a while.,” Carter said. “We focus on a number of different underreported stories. We’ve released two episodes and are getting ready to release the third.”
The first episode is titled Behind the Border Lie. The second episode, China is the New Cartel, and the third is coming out soon. Carter said they will try to release a new story every couple of weeks.
“We have a great team working on our show,” Carter said. “This feels like such an important series of stories. Our focus is not just on the number of people coming across the border. We want to take the stories to another level. We talk with our neighbors to the south trying to find solutions.”
Carter said she’s attempting to lay out the groundwork for the entire series. She’s gone to Guatemala, El Salvador in search of answers.
“As I learned about the wall, I’ve realized It’s not just a 2,000 mile border between the U.S. and Mexico,” Carter said. “The border issue affects every single American. Are we dealing with parent’s loss of their kids to fentanyl? I don’t think we cover that side of the story enough. These drugs are being sold in underground markets of horrors. I want people to understand every single one of us is affected by these issues.”
This country has difficulty coming to consensus as to how to battle problems like the border and drugs.
“I think politics always plays a role,” Carter explained. “I can tell you this isn’t just about Joe Biden. I remember when I first started covering the border under the Bush administration. I”d break all these stories while working for the Daily Bulletin. My stories have led to a lot of congressional investigations.”
Carter, a fine writer, captures subtle nuances in her stories, evident in this clip from “Beyond Borders” about the border.
“Dilapidated corrugated steel fencing salvaged from Vietnam flanks the opening. The gulch envelops those who stay there. It twists its thorny desert branches around them, depleting their spirits and taunting them with the mesmerizing lights of a city out of reach. The migrants who call “Smuggler’s Gulch” home for months at a time watch and wait amid bad company, as smugglers of humans and drugs also call the canyon home. Those waiting to cross say corrupt Mexican state police and military personnel are among them.
Carter said the lack of national security along the Mexican border is of great importance to her. The growth of the cartels is also a concern.
“I was tough on the Bush administration with these issues,” she said. “Tough on the Obama administration as well. I worked well with the Obama administration when I worked for the Washington Times.”
It seems to Carter, no administration has been able to effectively battle the drug issue or border issue efficiently.
“I feel the Trump administration finally clamped down,” Carter said. “It might not have been perfect, but at least he was holding people accountable. It’s the people who are being lied to,” she said. “The American people. It’s a criminal crisis. A humanitarian crisis. If we don’t tell the truth as to what is happening, who will?”
In episode 2 of Dark Wars, Carter directs her focus, vitriol, and energy toward China.
“They are our adversaries,” she said. “China has taken advantage of all the chaos in the world. China is capitalizing on our border crisis. The Chinese government is aware the Mexican Cartels are manufacturing fentanyl, sending it to the United States. “The Chinese government is smart when it comes to playing this game of chess,” Carter said. “The Chinese are allowing Mexican cartels to benefit. The U.S. treasury has written a report on this.”
Carter said she’s spent time visiting shelters for victims of human trafficking, talking to young boys and girls.
“That’s the impetus of the work I’m doing right now. These children have confronted the most horrific monsters we can imagine.”
When she talks of the drug crisis, you can hear the empathy in her voice. “We lost 107,000 people to fentanyl last year alone,” Carter said. “Kids being poisoned.
Her mother was a daughter of the Cuban revolution, and her father died when she was just 13 years-old. People like her mother worked their tails off for a better life in the United States.
“There’s a lot to fight for here,” Carter said. “I watched my mom work hard like all Americans. I recall my mother coming home from her work at the factory. Her hands would bleed from all the chemicals she worked with on a daily basis. Her job was to assemble airline parts at a rubber company. I was always so proud of her and heartbroken at the same time. She loved this country and always told me if I worked hard I could do something with my life.”
If Carter could have a blank check to fight the border crisis, importation of drugs, she said she would first designate the very dangerous, target the biggest cartels.
“It’s time we label cartels terrorist organizations,” Carter said. “We have to disrupt their chain of finances, get cooperation from our neighbors. I think we’ve made a huge mistake ignoring the problem for too long. I don’t think it’s too late. I don’t think we can afford for it to be too late.”
Despite the daunting and heavy topics Carter addresses, she’s still got hope.
“I wouldn’t visit the sex trafficing sites if I didn’t have hope,” Carter said. “I tell these victims we’re not going to forget their stories. I want the cartels to know that it’s not just me, but all the mothers and fathers around the country will hold them accountable for what they’ve done to our children.”
Carter said manufacturing needs to be brought back to the United States.
“We should be the envy of the rest of the world. Trump had started to change things. I wish some things he’s done were different. I wish he had held firm on Title 42. Perhaps he could have focused more on Central America. Let them know we were done supplying them with money as other administrations had.”

Jim Cryns writes features for Barrett News Media. He has spent time in radio as a reporter for WTMJ, and has served as an author and former writer for the Milwaukee Brewers. To touch base or pick up a copy of his new book: Talk To Me – Profiles on News Talkers and Media Leaders From Top 50 Markets, log on to Amazon or shoot Jim an email at [email protected].
BNM Writers
Is the NFL Really an Unchallengeable TV Product?
If most opportunities to watch the NFL in primetime are regarded as miserable, is there really no way to beat the league in the ratings or has no one actually tried?

Published
9 hours agoon
November 29, 2023
When the NFL placed Thursday Night Football on a streaming service, I wondered if anyone in sports television would really take the opportunity to challenge the league. So far, no one has, and likely will.
But that leaves me asking the question: is the NFL really that unchallengeable? Is it really this 1,000-pound gorilla that can’t be toppled?
In some aspects, yes, absolutely, 100%. But in others, no, I don’t think so.
For instance, any TV executive would be a fool to try to beat the league in the 1:00 PM and 4:00 PM ET timeslots on FOX and CBS. And really, you can’t hardly attack the league on Sunday Night Football or Monday Night Football, either.
But Thursday Night Football? Earlier this month, our Ryan Brown argued that the NFL put a bad product on Thursday nights and usurped the evening away from the college ranks and ESPN. And he’s right to a certain degree. Once Thursday Night Football really got going, ESPN essentially abandoned the idea of putting marquee matchups against the package.
My pitch to ESPN, or even FOX (although both are unlikely to want to anger the strongest strategic partner in television), would be that Thursday Night Football is as vulnerable as its ever been. It makes nearly weekly headlines for its lackluster schedule, which in turn leads to headlines about the lack of enthusiasm legendary broadcaster Al Michaels has to broadcast the lackluster schedule.
Also, if you pull up X on a given Thursday evening, you’ll see your timeline flooded with complaints about the viewing experience being miserable, fans struggling through buffering and distorted pictures, and overall complaints about the product. Now, for the record, I don’t have those issues, I think everyone else just needs to get better internet, but that’s another column.
But if most opportunities to watch the NFL in primetime are regarded as miserable, is there really no way to beat the league in the ratings or has no one actually tried?
My contention is that if ESPN or FOX were to put up real, actual, truly marquee college football games on Thursdays in primetime, they would have a chance to do really well. And I think it’s something the Worldwide Leader should consider now that it holds the rights to the SEC. With the additions of Texas and Oklahoma, the league, and in turn ESPN, will have some of the biggest games in college football, and there are only so many Saturdays and only so many good timeslots to put those broadcasts.
Why not look through the schedule and say “Ok, LSU vs Texas A&M, we’re going to put you on Thursday night at 8:00 PM ET up against the 1-10 Carolina Panthers versus the 4-8 Chicago Bears“?
In true internet spitballing fashion, that question leads me to another one: who says no?
The NFL is the unquestioned king of live television. I’m not foolish enough to think otherwise. But the ratings from the league’s first-ever Black Friday game featuring the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets had to be, in my estimation, slightly underwhelming with 9.6 million viewers.
But, just because you’re dominant doesn’t mean you’re bulletproof, either. I think there’s a hole in the NFL’s armor. And I think the league knows it, too, but operates from such a position of strength it believes it can’t be toppled. All it takes is someone to have the gumption to attack it.

Garrett Searight is the Editor of Barrett Sports Media and Barrett News Media. He previously was the Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH. He is also the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach him at [email protected].
BNM Writers
Dagen McDowell Is Ready For A New Adventure With Fox Business
“Every decision in America is born of policy, On the show, we bring that to our show. Talk about the news of the day.”

Published
10 months agoon
February 3, 2023By
Jim Cryns
To know Dagen McDowell, you must understand what she comes from, where she comes from. You won’t know her until you know the lessons, kindness, and determination set forth by her parents.
Her parents operated a small grocery store, LW Roark and Company. Charles and Joyce McDowell were high school sweethearts and both went to college but decided to go back home and open a business. “This is in the middle of nowhere,” McDowell said. “It was a wholesale grocery store. They sold it in the late 90s.”
She said her parents were smart, encouraging, and took every opportunity to teach McDowell and her brother.
“They’d constantly talk up people who came into the store. Both of them have and had an insatiable curiosity about everything. They felt they learned things through their customers. It was more fun to learn about things from other people.”
McDowell’s parents never took a week off work. Never. The family took no vacations as most families would. Once while McDowell was in college at Wake Forest University, the family visited the Air and Space Museum on the Mall in D.C.
“Both of my parents were very interested in architecture and landscapes. We’d go to Williamsburg and just look at the buildings.”
McDowell joined FOX News Channel in 2003 and helped launch FOX Business Network as a founding anchor in 2007.
Her mother passed away three years ago and her father is still very much a part of her life. Her father was a constant teacher.
“One time my father, who we called Dowell McDowell, was putting up an outbuilding and asked me how long one line should be if the other line was such and such. He taught me the Pythagorean theorem when I was about 4 years old.”
McDowell was nurtured by parents with endless curiosity.
“I was raised by parents who would always debate and converse around the dinner table. We shared breakfast and dinner together every day. They loved learning, were always inquisitive, never afraid to ask a question. My parents shared a fearlessness and passed that on to me. I’ve never been embarrassed to ask people questions. I love talking to people and finding out about things.”
For a long time, McDowell had no idea what she wanted to do for a living. She knew if she worked at different jobs she’d eventually figure out what she was good at.
“I knew I was a decent writer, but I always tried to get information out of people, what they were doing. Ask if they were fulfilled and happy.”
At Wake, Forest McDowell majored in art history and had every intention of working in a museum, possibly as a curator.
“I interned at the Center for Contemporary Arts. I lived in Venice, Italy for a while. Wake Forest owns a house in Venice.”
After that it was Colorado. She moved back to New York during the recession of 1991 with a duffel bag. She took the Amtrak to New York City and sublet an apartment for six months.
“I had no TV, just a radio. I knew I could find something good to do in New York, there were so many jobs. I always wanted to live in the city. Either the city or way out in the country. Nowhere in between.”
She said being in New York made her feel anything was possible. This was January in 1994 when job ads were still in the physical newspaper, like the New York Times. McDowell interviewed at Institutional Investor through a referral from a friend.
“It was a brilliant magazine with terrific writing,” McDowell explained. “Very prominent in the industry. They were looking for someone to work with the newsletter written for the financial community.”
She’d cover topics like the bond business, Wall Street, and money management. The magazine made her take a reporting test where you’d make up a story and write it. She was offered a job and worked there for three years.
“I learned to be a journalist there,” McDowell said. “I could write but I became a better journalist. We’d break news, create our sources, and learn more and more about finance. People love to talk about what they do if you show interest.”
The next big job was SmartMoney.com, a resource and web newspaper for private investors. There McDowell wrote a personal finance column. She started doing commentary on television shows, the way a lot of people in different professions tend to do. “Then I started making more appearances on weekend financial or business shows,” McDowell said.
She got a call from Neil Cavuto about 20 years ago and he told McDowell, ‘Kid, you want a job? I know you don’t have much professional TV experience. We’ll give you some training and you’ll figure it out. If you do, you stay. If not, you go.’
McDowell said she was glad she was a writer first before she arrived at Fox. She writes her own scripts and has a background in finance and business writing.
“Before the business network was launched, they had only one business reporter and two senior business correspondents,” she said. “I’ve gotten to do so many different jobs, use different muscles, so to speak. As the years have passed I’ve discovered other talents I may have and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”
There’s a new show in town. McDowell and Sean Duffy will co-host The Bottom Line which will air on weeknights from 6-7:00 PM ET.
McDowell said she and Duffy come from extremely similar backgrounds. Duffy is from rural Wisconsin and McDowell is from Virginia.
“We know what small-town living is like, “McDowell said. “I might live in New York City but where I grew up affects the way I view the world. I’m still grounded in my hometown. On the show, we look south and west with everything we cover. You have to think of your audience. Rather than talking about them, we talk with them. That’s our shared background and vision. Sean is extremely down to earth and generous.”
McDowell said the show is not financially based, but steeped in business.
She said Duffy’s experience as a former U.S. Congressman, he understands policy as well as financial matters.
“Every decision in America is born of policy,” she said. “On the show, we bring that to our show. Talk about the news of the day.”
This is different from anything McDowell has done in the past.
“It’s a two-anchor show in the evening,” she explained. “This is not taking place during market hours. We tie all the business happenings together from the day. Again, it’s not about Washington or New York. It’s about the people we grew up with. We talk to them. Build a relationship with them on the air. For me, this is not just sitting in front of a camera. I can run off at the mouth as well as anyone, hang in there with the filibuster.”
McDowell says she is blunt, but hopes she isn’t rude. During a recent interview for the new show she used the terms ‘pig potatoes’ and ‘chapped backsides.’
“Those are terms I just made up,” she said. “I make up a lot of phrases and don’t always know what they mean. I have an entire repertoire of those kinds of phrases.”
Duffy assumed they were southern phrases he had to learn from McDowell, but she assured him she’d never heard them anywhere else.
“I’m just making stuff up,” McDowell said. “You can’t curse. Can’t say BS. At least you shouldn’t say BS on television. You don’t want to say manure. You never want to say something that makes people wince or evokes a smell.”
Dealing with people directly and bluntly seems to come from her mother.
“My mother had grit,” McDowell said. “She was also very kind, never syrupy. I used to say she had no magnolia-mouth.
That’s got to be a southern phrase.
McDowell said her mother was not a servile flatterer, but she was kind. Always there when somebody was in need.
“She had real grit. She’d stand and fight for her friends and family members.”
Her mother passed away after being diagnosed with stage-four cancer.
“She went through unimaginable pain,” McDowell said of her mother. “For nearly six years. You want to talk about somebody who was tough. There was nobody more pugnacious than my mother.”
She explained even with her illness, her mother was always on the go. Continuing to live her life. When questioned about being so active while she was ill, her mother continued to show grit.
“My mother would say she didn’t want to walk around looking like she had cancer. She asked, ‘What choice do I have? I could lay in bed and wait to die, or I can get up and do what I can .’”
McDowell said her mother’s illness taught her to be a caregiver in ways she never could have imagined. Her mother taught her to find moments of joy every single day, in the smallest of things.
“It can be as simple as telling a stranger to have a great day. Treat a perfect stranger with kindness. I do it all day long. I know it sounds corny, but I want to be known as a person who brings a casserole to a friend when they’re ill.”
A one-sheet from Fox tells you McDowell and the culmination of her background is perfect for The Bottom Line. The fact is, it’s true.

Jim Cryns writes features for Barrett News Media. He has spent time in radio as a reporter for WTMJ, and has served as an author and former writer for the Milwaukee Brewers. To touch base or pick up a copy of his new book: Talk To Me – Profiles on News Talkers and Media Leaders From Top 50 Markets, log on to Amazon or shoot Jim an email at [email protected].
BNM Writers
Airing The Tyre Nichols Video Was A Necessity
There were hard moments to watch in those videos, hard sounds to hear. But they aired.

Published
10 months agoon
February 2, 2023By
Bill Zito
Far be it for me not to address this outrageous and embarrassing instance in humanity. After the videos of Memphis police brutally beating Tyre Nichols were shown on television there really seemed to be more outrage emerging from society this time than from the media, for a change. One would think that’s how we wish things to be.
In instances like this, where the video and audio images are far from brief but are instead chaptered as they unfold, there are few options other than to let them run their course. Clocks — breaks hard and soft — are out the window, just as in live coverage.
Because that’s what this was, only the live this time was us, and as we all absorbed and reacted to actions disapprovingly familiar yet somehow foreign at the same time, the impact was still becoming apparent even though we already knew the outcome.
It’s happened before.
Not always like this but we’ve seen it before, police encounters shown on the news overtakes and become the news.
It takes effect as the sights and sounds are digested, dissected, and discussed, often before their potential impact could really be imagined.
In 1991, when the Handycam footage crossed screens for the first time and we learned Rodney King’s name, we didn’t know then but we had a feeling.
We were on the right track, though as newsrooms evolved and street reporting incorporated a different type of storytelling.
I was a cop in 1991. Changes came. Some.
It’s 2023, I’m no longer a cop. Changes will come again. Some.
Turning points — or the overused watershed moments — mean just as much to the news media as they do to law enforcement.
The “why’s” that make this a turning point are more society and community based this time around than they were in 1991.
At least I think so. And I don’t think it makes a bit of difference who’s involved this time.
There were hard moments to watch in those videos, and hard sounds to hear. But they aired. Where they couldn’t air, they were described in great detail; descriptions sometimes can be worse than the real thing. Sometimes, not this time.
And they should air, they shouldn’t stop airing. This is what happened and this is what people need to see and hear and this is exactly why we are here.
Warn them, provide them with a heads up that they’re not going to like what happens next. It’s life and we show life, and we show what some of us do with it when it’s someone else’s.
Overall, I would say the news platforms held their composure, even after the videos were released. I saw, read, and heard some refreshingly neutral coverage, even from outlets where I expected hard turns into the lanes on either side of the road.
Legitimate questions were asked by anchors and reporters and much of the time, the off-balance issues were raised more by those on the sidewalks and those on the other side of the cameras and microphones.
As much as I find myself in disagreement with what I often see on the cable networks — all the cable networks — I did find a sense of symmetry watching CNN’s Don Lemon speak with Memphis City Council Chair Martavius Jones in the hours after the videos were released.
Regular protocols be damned, Lemon and producers lingered patiently as Jones, visibly overcome by emotion, struggled to regain breath and composure enough to be able to speak. Rather than cut away or move to other elements, they stood fast and it became an example of what often requires no words.
There were fewer punches pulled on other platforms as well.
The sounds of the screams, the impacts, and the hate-filled commands were broadcast through car radios.
As were Tyre Nichol’s calls for his mom. They aired. They had to.

Bill Zito has devoted most of his work efforts to broadcast news since 1999. He made the career switch after serving a dozen years as a police officer on both coasts. Splitting the time between Radio and TV, he’s worked for ABC News and Fox News, News 12 New York , The Weather Channel and KIRO and KOMO in Seattle. He writes, edits and anchors for Audacy’s WTIC-AM in Hartford and lives in New England. You can find him on Twitter @BillZitoNEWS.