MSNBC’s identity crisis
When Adam Piore set out to profile MSNBC, he discovered a community of viewers who feel that, just by watching cable news, they are participating in our democracy.On this week’s Kicker, Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, speaks with Piore and Betsy Morais, our managing editor, to ask why cable networks abandoned their “just the news” stance to emphasize opinion and commentary, and how they will struggle to cover 2020 in the midst of a public health crisis.
22 Maj 202021min
Indian Country: Behind the monolith
As COVID-19 death rates in some native communities soar, and federal care package payments to Indigenous tribes lag behind those to state and municipal governments, why does the US trail so far behind other colonizing countries in its news coverage of its first peoples?On this week’s Kicker, Kyle Hopkins, special projects editor of the Anchorage Daily News and recent recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for public service, and Jenni Monet, an independent journalist and a tribal citizen of the Pueb...
15 Maj 202022min
A break from the pandemic: the bizarre invasion of Venezuela
Investigative journalist Giancarlo Fiorella was watching when the Associated Press reported a plot to overthrow Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela. What Fiorella could not believe was that, after the planned coup was revealed, Jordan Goudreau, a former green beret and sometime security guard to President Trump, decided to go through with it anyway. Equating himself to Alexander the Great, Goudreau sent his men across hundreds of miles of open sea, towards certain failure.On this week’...
8 Maj 202024min
How did medical masks become a signal?
As tens of thousands of Americans die of COVID-19, fear and uncertainty devolve into paranoid tribalism. At our most extreme, one side believes science is sacrosanct, and the other claims the pandemic is a plot to destabilize the president. Political commentator Charlie Sykes was once at the center of the American conservative movement. Now he opposes Donald Trump and the right-wing media that enable his cult of personality. On this week’s Kicker, Sykes, founder and editor-at-large of The Bul...
1 Maj 202027min
The hunger for COVID-19 and climate crisis coverage
The intersection of conflict, climate, and disease has never been more apparent, and neither has public need for “journalistic rigor and urgency.”On this week’s Kicker, E. Tammy Kim, a freelance reporter and essayist, and Mark Hertsgaard, the environmental correspondent for The Nation, speak with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, on what COVID-19 and the climate crisis reveal about the problem of social systems that are exclusionary by design.
24 Apr 202020min
Liz Bruenig on covering spirituality and death in a plague year
Religion is difficult for journalists to cover, in part because it lies beyond observation and resists narrative. On this week’s Kicker, Elizabeth Bruenig, an opinion writer for the New York Times, speaks with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, on how, as we live in a time of enormous loss, we can report on spirituality and death.
17 Apr 202018min
Prisoners trapped in the path of COVID-19
Punished for wearing masks, or for asking to have their temperatures taken, our aging prison population is denied basic social distancing, hygiene, and cleaning supplies they need to defend themselves against COVID-19. Governor Andrew Cuomo has not responded to letters from advocates for the inmates, and he claims, falsely, that he lacks the authority to fix the issues.Journalist Rosa Goldensohn, of The City, reports on inmates still forced to congregate, or to sleep in beds 16 inches apart. ...
10 Apr 202020min
A visit to an ER COVID-19 unit gives new perspective on pandemic data
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s COVID-19 press conferences rely heavily on data, as does press coverage of the pandemic. But when CJR’s Amanda Darrach got sick, she learned how misleading those numbers are. On this week’s Kicker, Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, speaks with Darrach about how we should cover the trauma of COVID-19.
3 Apr 202014min
