Whiskey Riff’s Political Coverage Is Deceptive and Concerning

Radio/Media 119 Comments


The massive country music and lifestyle publication Whiskey Riff makes for an extremely easy target with their click bait stories, their terrible format with so many video streaming ads populating on top of each other that you can’t even read the content, and how they’ve expanded their coverage so much in the last few months that music coverage makes up a smaller portion of their content in between sports, outdoors, and general “Hey, this is the most buzzy thing on the internet” stuff like the “Hawk Tuah Girl.”

But ultimately, for all its flaws and annoyances, Whiskey Riff has been a huge player in helping to transform country music where independent artists actually have a shot at a career because a big publication will get behind them and help generate buzz. There is also a lot of jealousy at Whiskey Riff‘s success from other journalists and publications, and ultimately that’s just petty. Good for them for becoming so successful.

But their unscrupulous journalistic practices are disturbing, and they’re now being exacerbated by deciding that political coverage also needs to be part of the Whiskey Riff diet. The publication can publish whatever they want, including politics. But let’s not forget that Whiskey Riff is partially owned by the Grand Ole Opry, which makes the stakes of their coverage inexorably tied to country music in a meaningful way, while the politicization of the music space is something we all should be wary of.

In some respects, it makes sense why Whiskey Riff is getting into politics. At this point, few if anyone is reading about music anymore. That’s just a simple fact. If you’re reading these very words, you may disagree with this, because you might come to Saving Country Music or similar websites every day. But the number of people doing this is dwindling to unsustainable numbers in lieu of coverage of politics and sports, exacerbated by the looming Presidential election in the United States, as well as the recent Olympics and impending NFL Football season.

This is all currently top-of-mind after on Tuesday, Whiskey Riff posted the same basic article highlighting politically-divisive quotes from John Rich taken from a two-year-old interview, creating a massive internet stir the same way it did when they posted the quotes originally in 2022, and again in 2023.

Whiskey Riff is not alone in reposting old articles as new ones. Unfortunately, this unethical practice is common among these click-centric 2nd-tier publications. We see this from Taste of Country, The Boot, and other publications in the country music space as well. They especially love to do this with anniversaries and historical pieces. Criticize publications like The New York Times, Rolling Stone, CNN, Fox News, etc. all you want. They would never engage in this deceptive practice. It’s also against search engine policies from companies like Google.

The same basic John Rich interview story has been published now at least three times by Whiskey Riff, verified by their Facebook posts. This is different from reposting a link to a previous article on social media, which would be fine according to conventional journalistic practices.


After Whiskey Riff posted this article on Tuesday (8-13), it went viral once again, with one X/Twitter user, Zane Bearden, posting a viral response to the headline that is exploding at the moment, explaining why John Rich’s theory on Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings is completely incorrect, which it is. But this also inadvertently brings attention back to the original Whiskey Riff story.



As an aside, John Rich’s comments never made any sense. They didn’t make sense when he uttered them two years ago when country music was on the dramatic upswing and actually pushing back against many of the forces trying to politicize the music, and it’s even more incorrect today when you have Jason Aldean out there hanging out beside Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention. Barack Obama recently put a Morgan Wallen song in his summer playlist. Maren Morris has left the genre. This fight is over, or at least, has shifted.

But the bigger problem here isn’t anyone’s specific political ideologies. It is the unnecessary politicization of the country music space that is happening through Whiskey Riff‘s political coverage. Previously, the concern had been Rolling Ston and, publications outside of country music, and how political apparatchiks had embedded themselves within this media environment attempting to flip America’s rural electorate from red to blue through the forum of country music by shaming country stars to come out for left-leaning causes.

Not only did that political project fail, it was very directly counter-productive, something Saving Country Music warned about when the political project was launched. Far and away, country music is now much more outwardly right-leaning than it was before the left-leaning political project targeting country began in 2016 after the election of Donald Trump. Much of this right-leaning perspective is a backlash against the attempt to politicize country music on the left.

One of the greatest examples of this political overreach on the left was the ludicrous focus on the Instagram account of Jason Aldean’s wife. Where previously Aldean was on record (in Rolling Stone, no less) saying he didn’t want to get involved in politics at all, after The Washington Post published three dedicated articles about Brittany Aldean’s Instagram posts alone, Aldean responded by speaking out politically as well. Jason Aldean’s wife is not a country music performer. It was out-of-bounds to consider her opinions as representative of country music.

Now Whiskey Riff is publishing similar stories—if not even worse—just on the right. On August 6th, they posted an article about how the wife of a wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers criticized the Kamala Harris pick for Vice President. So you basically had a country music publication that also covers sports posting an article about how the wife of a football player said something politically. This puts you so many degrees of separation from what’s supposed to be the Grand Ole Opry-backed Whiskey Riff‘s beat that it’s ridiculous.


The top comments on X/Twitter said it all.

“I liked it better when this was just a music review site by people who never passed college English.”

“Used to enjoy when this was a music site highlighting good music now its just a political right wing site. sad.”

This is just one example of the many political stories Whiskey Riff has posted recently.

Again, there are perverse incentives to publications going in these directions since they gin up public engagement and result in tons of clicks while the amount of clicks you can garner posting about country music or the arts is plummeting. This is also exacerbated by search engines prioritizing political and sports coverage over arts coverage.

Music must remain and institution where artists are able to share songs and stories that cross the political divide and bring people together across ideologies. Even if you’re a politically active person, it’s important to recognize that it’s often a story song or a perspective shared in a song that can sway someone’s opinion significantly better than a negative political ad, or a slanted news story.

Whiskey Riff can publish whatever they want. But the public should reject the politicization of music coverage or the music itself, whether it’s coming from the left or the right. They should also be clear-eyed about the incentives in place that have led to this coverage, and cater their browsing behaviors accordingly.

Music media publications are failing at an alarming rate, and it’s not just the fault of massive publications like Whiskey Riff gobbling up market share. It’s because consumers are favoring these publications over others than put quality and objectivity first. Whiskey Riff also has good coverage, and has been a massive player in opening up country music to artists not on major labels or played on the radio. But their recent political coverage has been troubling, and at times, a bridge too far.

© 2024 Saving Country Music

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