On his YouTube channel, Channel 5, Andrew Callaghan consistently pushes the envelope of what it means to be a YouTuber and journalist. In 2024, 2.9 million subscribers eagerly clicked to watch him get arrested at the US-Mexican border and interview protesters at political rallies.
Callaghan often gets face-to-face with America’s most out-there personalities. In 2022, he interviewed Alex Jones, and Callaghan closed out 2024 talking to the pastor of a snake-handling church.
Callaghan’s willingness to insert himself as a character in his work creates a rawness in his content that separates him from traditional reporters in the space.
In 2021, Callaghan met the star of his latest documentary, Dear Kelly, Kelly J. Patriot. Callaghan spotted Kelly’s outlandish car at a White Lives Matter rally and set out to interview him. He instantly became enthralled with Kelly’s descent down the MAGA rabbit hole.
Over the next four and a half years, Callaghan met with Kelly multiple times. The relationship they built led Callaghan to become mildly obsessed with trying to pull Kelly out of his conspiracy theory (which I won’t spoil). Callaghan ultimately ended up as a key figure in his own documentary.
“Being able to tell real human stories is what motivates me mostly,” Callaghan said in an interview with Passionfruit. “If you can take an issue that’s being talked about in a very two-dimensional political way and focus on somebody’s life, like Kelly’s, that is where you start to get more empathy and just understanding.”
My Parasocial Relationship With Andrew Callaghan’s Work
I’ve been watching Callaghan’s content since his very early day as a 21-year-old in an oversized suit interviewing drunk strangers on the night-lit streets of New Orleans. I followed him when he launched All Gas No Brakes, a YouTube channel covering wider topics and interviewing people at a flat earth conference, a furry convention, and on the Las Vegas strip.
In 2020, when Callaghan put himself in physical threat at some of the nation’s most contentious gatherings, offering unforgettable footage of the fiery George Floyd protests and a cringy Proud Boy rally, I became a die-hard fan. In 2021, Callaghan lost the rights to All Gas No Brakes in a contract dispute with his original production company. He started Channel 5 to continue his work.
“Now that I’m older, I’ve gone through more and I take this job more seriously because I realize the power that journalism has, and I want to use the platform to do meaningful shit,” Callaghan said.
Other journalists I spoke with were offered an interview with Callaghan but turned it down. But when I got the email opportunity, I knew I couldn’t say no. I’ve interviewed hundreds of influencers across the content spectrum, but rarely do I get a chance to chat with someone whose whole catalog I’ve consumed.
Andrew Callaghan Vs. the Mainstream Media
It’s clear that Callaghan has a strong distaste for the mainstream media. In our interview he pointed to “the ties between politicians and news outlets.”
In his eyes, “whenever newspapers started dying and whenever traditional print and TV media started getting less viewership, they had to pivot to more sensational content to get more eyes so that they can generate ad revenue, so they can keep the business afloat.”
“Anytime the mainstream media covers me, they always use the word YouTuber, which is just funny, because that makes it sound like I’m Logan Paul, like, like I’m gonna have a selfie stick,” Callaghan said. “But they just don’t understand. That’s why I say people think the mainstream media is dead, but it’s actually not. They still set the tone for a lot of stuff.”
That may be true. It should be noted, however,that the last time Callaghan hit the mainstream news cycle was when he was promoting the release of his first documentary in 2022. “This Place Rules,” released by HBO, examined extremists in the lead-up to the Jan 6 insurrection.
Callaghan brought up his views on the mainstream media during confrontational interviews with CNN’s Don Lemon and a Boston radio host. He used the interviews to talk about how the 24-hour news cycle sowes fear and division. Both pundits disagreed with him.
Accusations and a Year Long Absence
The wider internet didn’t turn on him until a week before the first doc’s release. In January 2023, two different women came forward with stories that they had felt pressured into sexual encounters with him, with further allegations spreading online.
The creator released an apology a few weeks later on a separate channel where he admitted that he “wanted to be fully responsible for not having a fluid understanding of consent and what enthusiastic consent looks like.” Callaghan added he would be going to a 12-step program.
For a full year, Callaghan disappeared from the internet. “I would look around for signs of lost pets and make documentaries about them and post them to Nextdoor, trying to use my documentary skills for good.”
In an interview with podcaster Lex Friedman, Callaghan shared that during that period, he dealt with suicidal thoughts.
He also acknowledged that there was a pattern of behavior that needed to be fixed with therapy, and has cut down on alcohol. In another podcast interview with Adam22 of No Jumper, Callaghan said that he “doesn’t really party like that. But I still consume in moderation from time to time.”
The Return of Channel 5
After Callaghan’s return, his content felt different, and I felt differently about it. Some of it was better. For example, he now works with foreign correspondents to get unique access to places like the Gaza Strip and the Tijuana red light district.
“I just am curious about international issues, and me being American, I wanted whenever we have people covering that country they should be from that country,” Callaghan said.
But many of his videos, which are pulling in over a million views each, have shifted in vibe. He abandoned the ill-fitting suit long ago. But the way he delivers the information, whether it is a lesson on the white flight in Philadelphia or crime statistics in San Fransico, feels like he’s catering to the crowd that stuck around after his cancellation.
Though his content often lets controversial figures speak without much pushback in person, it’s now more common to use data and b-roll to add further context and comment in the edit.
“Like, if someone says a totally false statistic, it might be worth it to do a fact check,” Callaghan said. “But most of the time, if someone’s rambling about, you know, the flat earth, I’m not going to have a fact check slide where I’m like, actually, scientists have concluded that the earth is spherical. But, I mean, it’s tough.”
His first interview back was with January 6 protestor, Jacob Chansley, known as the Q Anon Shaman. More recently, Callaghan looked at a Revolutionary Communist Party in MacArthur Park, Los Angeles. Interestingly enough, Callaghan ended the video with a diatribe on woke identity politics.
Is Objectivity Impossible?
Since Callaghan started going viral during the pandemic, there has been an influx of copycats who mimicked Callaghan’s style, using journalism as an excuse to spread misinformation and propaganda for the sake of views.
Take YouTuber Tyler Olivera, who has seven million subscribers, for example. Since early 2023, he has transitioned from pranks, like walking into the back of a fast food restaurant and pretending to be the boss’s son, to man-on-the-street reporting, using outlandish AI thumbnails and pushing conspiracy theories.
Callaghan has a “friendly dynamic” with Olivera but acknowledges that his “keyframes are fucking ridiculous” and that “everyone has a lot of learning to do, especially when it comes to packaging content the right or wrong way.”
“I don’t like to criticize anybody who’s, like, trying to do journalism their own way because everyone has room for improvement,” Callaghan said. “And if people are out there talking to folks, that’s a good thing.”
“Objectivity” is impossible in reporting, according to Callaghan, who accepts “that every human has their biases, their opinions, and they are themselves going into a story, even if they want to present themselves as this transparent arbiter of the fourth estate.”
The Problem With Befriending Your Subjects
For his part, Callaghan is a very skilled interviewer and has had some of the most controversial figures of the decade open up about their experiences and feelings. He oozes with likability. In the past, Callaghan says that parasocial relationships have “evolved in an unhealthy way in the past.”
This is why, nowadays, he’s trying to maintain a distance between himself and his fans by staying off social media and in public “just about being as nice as possible, but also keeping your bubble, your real friends strong.
That said, in the summer of 2022, Callaghan helped rapper Crip Mac raise a legal defense fund after he was federally charged with one count of being a felon in possession of ammunition and then sentenced to three years behind bars.
My Parasocial (Dis)enchantment with Andrew Callaghan
Speaking with Callaghan, my one-sided relationship took center stage. The interview ended with us talking about video games. As I nodded along in boyish splendor, I struggled to come to terms with the creator I’d watched and the 27-year-old whose curly hair bopped along as he asked me how I felt about Red Dead Redemption 2.
I’m no longer the viewer I was a half-decade ago, enthusiastically gobbling up Florida men interviews who wear designer tags in their hair and clowns who love to rub feet. And Callaghan is no longer that same creator, focusing on more in-depth pieces that examine societal rot and the system put in place that now causes it.
I’m now a grizzled journalism veteran in his 30s, but I still watch every Channel 5 video on upload. Like with all content I consume, both online and off, I question the narrative and look at the biases of who’s storytelling.
After a 45-minute conversation, Callaghan is no longer just that face on a screen whose content and controversies I watched from afar. My biases leached their way into this narrative, forcing me to rethink if I even knew Andrew Callaghan.
