An Interview with Senator Jon Tester: The Media Ecosystem in Today’s Democracy

Former U.S. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) has devoted his life to public service as a music teacher, a Big Sandy school board member, and a leader in the Montana State Senate and U.S. Senate. But if you ask Tester what he does for a living, he will say first and foremost that he is a third-generation farmer. Born in Havre, Montana, Tester grew up in Big Sandy and graduated from the College of Great Falls in 1978 with a degree in music. During his 18-year tenure at the U.S. Senate, Tester served on numerous committees, most recently as the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs. He was a champion for rural America.

Alexander Walsh, Senior Editor of Policy Analysis at the Chicago Policy Review, conducted this interview on April 1^st, 2025. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

CPR: This is a little overdue, but welcome to Chicago! As you may know, many people across the U.S., our nation’s capital, and most significant cities are not well attuned to rural communities’ challenges. These include access to health care, housing, public transportation, higher education, and even broadband internet. As someone who grew up in northern Michigan, I have witnessed these challenges firsthand in our region. In your experience representing rural communities in Montana and across the U.S., what challenges are facing rural communities today that you feel are of the utmost importance and need to be addressed, and why?

 Senator Tester: I’m not sure that people are well-informed or tuned in to the challenges in rural America. By the way, I would say the same thing about people in rural America when it comes to urban America. I don’t think there’s a real understanding that urban America also has its challenges. Some are the same. But the one major difference in rural America is distance. I always give the example: If I’m going to get a carton of milk, it’s a 26-mile round trip. When I was living in Washington, D.C., it was a four-block walk round trip. So the thing about distance is a big deal because it tends to take time, it tends to cost money and, if you don’t have the infrastructure to support it — with highways or bridges, for example, but also things like air connections at a reasonable price, which tends to be higher in rural America than it does in urban America — then you’ve got problems. So I would say the challenge of distance is the biggest thing.

Another example is my wife, who went to a medical appointment yesterday. It was 180 miles, round trip. That’s a pretty good shot, you know? And we don’t live in the most rural part of our county. Some people would travel a lot further than that.

CPR: You recently launched a podcast called “Grounded.” The podcast aims to help individuals overwhelmed by the news coming out of Washington. Interestingly, you partnered with a reporter, Maritsa Georgiou, as a co-host. Do you mind walking us through how the podcast came to be? What is it like to change your positionality from interviewee to interviewer?

 Senator Tester: So Maritsa got laid off about the same time I got laid off. She worked for Scripps News. She was at the desk in Atlanta — she lived in Missoula but flew back and forth — and I knew her. She’s one of the best political reporters in Montana, if not one of the best right now. But she sent me a note and said, “What do you think? We are both unemployed. Do you want to do a podcast?” So we did, and we’ve made about $65 off it in the last two months. So we’re rolling the dough.

Maritsa is a press person. She’s more of an interviewer. You can tell if you listen to the podcast. She actually thinks about what she’s asking. I try to take all my questions from a standpoint: “I was a policy maker, and we’re talking to policy makers, so let’s figure out how we can make people understand what goes into the thought process of the decision.” We also talked to Leon Panetta, who has been around since the Nixon administration. He’s from California, served just about every head of every agency — Defense, National Intelligence, CIA — and what I tried to do was try to get him to talk about why Signal-gate was important, and from his perspective as a policy maker. If you listen to that, there’s one point in time where I actually said: “Well, what do you think? It’s about accountability, right?” I leave the tough questions to Maritsa. I try to make the interview 1) user-friendly, and 2) make it so that people listening to it, who may not be used to listening to how the stuff’s made in Washington, DC, can get a better idea.

CPR: You’ve pointed out that the local media landscape is deteriorating at a massive rate, especially for rural communities. One of the most important roles local media play in citizens’ lives is keeping elected officials accountable. How does the decline of the local media landscape threaten democracy? What do you think we can do to save it?

Senator Tester: The second question is a lot harder than the first. What it does is it takes away accountability. When people don’t know what your elected officials are doing, and if all you’re hearing about them is from the elected officials’ mouths, you may not be getting the whole story. And so I think the media is there for accountability, to hold people accountable for their actions. So if you do some stupid shit, people will know about it because they will read it in the newspaper or hear about it on the radio or see it on TV. Those are pretty old school, but that’s where I get it.

What do I think it’s going to take to change it? Boy, that’s a hard question, especially in rural areas where, you know, we’re seeing population declines and losing critical mass. I think online subscriptions can help. It may end up that for many of these local newspapers, there might be three communities that all had a paper, and they’re all consolidating into one paper to get a bigger readership. It’s basically a third of the papers dedicated to this community, and then if you want to find out what’s going on in neighboring towns, you can read about it too. So that’s another possibility. But I don’t think there’s any easy solution, to be quite honest with you, because the internet has taken things over.

CPR: Before our interview, I researched your involvement in various Senate committees. During your most recent tenure as Senator, you served as the chair of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs. How do you view service members and veterans as a special audience needing specific messaging?

 Senator Tester: Everybody says, “Thank you for your service.” For me, it’s more than that. It’s more than those words. They sign the dotted line, and they basically say, “Do with my life what you want.” And so if your life has changed because of that experience and your service to the military, whether that’s because of exposure to toxins or because you get a leg blown off, I think it’s our duty as American citizens to make sure we make your life whole again as much as possible. As far as reaching out to that audience, specifically on the podcast, we did the one on Signal-gate that has everything to do with our military people or the rank-and-file folks all the way up to the officers about respect, about accountability, and making sure that you don’t do a sloppy job. I did not have that in mind, specifically, but that was an outcome of it. Leon [Panetta] went down that line pretty artfully, quite frankly. We’ve got an all-volunteer military. If you want young people to sign up, they will look and see how we’re treating our veterans. If we don’t treat our veterans right, they’re not going to sign up for the military. It’s important for our national defense. It’s important for our economy. I don’t know if we do anything on the podcast, per se, to talk about veterans in a different way than we talk about anybody else. Now I will tell you we’ll have [former VA Secretary] Denis McDonough on. That show will be very important for our veterans, but I think it’ll be important to those who aren’t veterans for the same reasons.

 CPR: The theme of this year’s annual print publication is In Transition. ​​The theme signals the shifting paradigms across political, economic, cultural, and technological spheres. As the world moves away from entrenched norms, these articles will seek insight into the challenges and opportunities of such transitions. As you embark on your own transition from formal public service, what kinds of roles and missions are you seeking out? How do you see yourself evolving over the next four years? Do you have any predictions about the trajectory of our country?

Senator Tester: There are shifting paradigms, but if the shift is to move away from democracy, and people think that’s okay, it’s a huge mistake. It’s a mistake that we will regret, and our kids and grandkids will regret for generations to come. I can’t emphasize it enough, because the polling suggests that people don’t really understand how important democracies are. And quite frankly, as I look at what’s going on in Washington, DC, it’s less about saving money, it’s less about removing any sort of graft or corruption, and it’s more about destroying democracy and destroying the rule of law. And I can’t say that loud enough, or more emphatically, that democracy isn’t perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than anything else we can choose. It isn’t free, and it didn’t come about free, and if you don’t fight for it and you don’t believe what it stands for, then go live in mainland China because, quite frankly, they don’t have freedom. They don’t have privacy. They don’t have the ability to make their own decisions. They don’t have self-determination. They don’t have any of that sh*t.

 As for my transition, I farmed all the time while I was in the United States Senate. I didn’t hire anybody. It was Charlotte, my wife, and I. Until the last five years, our son would come out, and he helped with being the mechanic. He will tell you, by his own free will and accord, that he does not like to sit on a tractor for 16 to 18 hours a day, and he doesn’t, but he’s a hell of a mechanic. So he helps us there. That farm is in transition because my grandson, who’s wanted to be a farmer since he was a little kid, is going to school to take up diesel mechanics at a university fairly close to where the farm is, and hopefully he’ll be able to do that. As far as my own personal transition, I want to use what I’ve learned as a state senator, United States senator, a school board member, as a member on the FSA committee — of all my experience throughout my entire lifetime — to try to make things better for people and make things work. Now, whether that’s teaching a class here at the University of Chicago, a seminar, or consulting with companies, or being part of the media, all that stuff’s up in the air for me now. Still, we’ll continue to look for opportunities to use the experience I had to make things go better.