Margaret Sullivan Takes a New Look at Journalism Ethics
This summer, Margaret Sullivan, the executive director of the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security at Columbia Journalism School, and her colleague Julie Gerstein published a series of essays in CJR exploring what a new generation of journalism ethics might look like, as the media industry evolves. “It is conventional wisdom among journalists that while the world around us changes, our ethics do not,” Sullivan wrote, in her introduction to the project. “Yet a fresh lo...
23 Okt 28min
Chicago’s Block Club Is Ready for ICE
On Thursday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring federal agents from using riot control measures like tear gas to disperse journalists seeking to cover protests outside the Broadview ICE processing center, near Chicago. The order was the result of a lawsuit filed earlier in the week by several Chicago news organizations and reporters who had been injured or detained while trying to cover ICE activity in the city. Stephanie Lulay is the co–executive e...
10 Okt 25min
Elle Reeve on the Charlie Kirk Shooting Suspect’s Inscrutable Memes
In 2017, Elle Reeve, then a correspondent for Vice News, became a household name when she reported from the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia—as neo-Nazis marched with burning torches and a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters. Reeve has developed an expertise on what you might call the fringe beat, covering shadowy internet groups and right-wing political movements for CNN. Those worlds collided when a very online man assassinated the rig...
19 Sep 36min
Garrett Graff Thinks the Press Should Be Taking Trump’s Health Much More Seriously
Last week, as DC reporters were patting themselves on the back for not falling for internet falsehoods claiming that Donald Trump had secretly died, Garrett Graff wrote an essay on his blog, Doomsday Scenario, saying, “It’s time to have a serious conversation about Trump’s health.” Graff is an author and historian who’s spent more than two decades covering American politics—more recently he’s written a series of oral histories on major world events, and hosted a critically acclaimed podcast s...
10 Sep 27min
Hind Hassan Is Sorry We Didn’t Do More to Make Journalism Safe
Earlier this month, Hind Hassan, a decorated documentary news reporter who has covered everything from conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, and Ukraine to the bizarre underworld of the global wellness industry, spoke at a graduation ceremony for students at Columbia Journalism School. In her address, Hassan pointedly apologized for not doing more to make the job safer for the next generation—a reference to, as she explains in this week’s episode of The Kicker, the brutality of the war in Gaza.&n...
28 Aug 28min
Will the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal Break MAGA Media?
For the past few weeks, MAGA media and conservative podcasters have been torn apart over President Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein saga. Anna Merlan, a senior reporter at Mother Jones, joins The Kicker to talk about right-wing media’s efforts to change the subject—and whether their audiences will go along with it. Read more: *Anna Merlan on what happened the last time Trump’s team tried to satisfy right-wing media’s hunger for Epstein news *Merlan on how Trump has constructed a ...
1 Aug 24min
What’s the Matter with the BBC?
Recent weeks have not been very comfortable for the BBC. A documentary about Gaza it refused to broadcast was aired instead by a competitor, to critical acclaim. A livestream of the Glastonbury Festival turned into a political nightmare, after a performer led the crowd in a chant of “Death to the IDF”—leading the network to ditch plans for future “high risk” live shows. But Alan Rusbridger, who spent twenty years as the editor of The Guardian and is now the editor of Prospect magazine, believ...
11 Juli 26min
The Kicker Live: Branko Brkic Wants Journalists to Wake Up
Last year, Branko Brkic, the founder of the Daily Maverick, a South African news outlet, left his day job to launch an advocacy campaign in defense of journalism. Called Project Kontinuum, the organization aims to sound the alarm about the global threats facing the institution of journalism—and to begin to mount a defense. In this conversation, Brkic speaks about the admittedly “bleak” picture that he paints, and why news outlets have to stop playing defense if they want to survive. This podc...
25 Juni 41min
