Latest / Question Everything / A Pitch for Why Journalists Need to Fight

Transcript

A Pitch for Why Journalists Need to Fight · Question Everything

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. There's a show I've been wanting to turn
0:08
Speaker 1: you all on to for a while. It's called Seen
0:11
Speaker 1: on Radio, and specifically their most recent season, which is
0:14
Speaker 1: called The News. Seen on Radio is a show created
0:18
Speaker 1: by John Bewin and often co-hosted with Chenjerai Kumanika, both
0:22
Speaker 1: of whom I know and are great. And each season,
0:24
Speaker 1: they kind of take on a big topic and look
0:27
Speaker 1: at it from all different angles. So they've done capitalism,
0:29
Speaker 1: they've done whiteness, and this season is about journalism. And
0:34
Speaker 1: I just thought listeners to this show need to check
0:37
Speaker 1: out this eight-part series from Seen on Radio about the news.
0:40
Speaker 1: And again, they dig into it from all different angles.
0:42
Speaker 1: John is based in North Carolina, so he actually uses
0:45
Speaker 1: that as like a home base for looking at the
0:47
Speaker 1: state of local media in particular. He travels to different
0:50
Speaker 1: rural areas, talks to different people in North Carolina involved
0:54
Speaker 1: in local media, and then uses that to illustrate journalism.
0:56
Speaker 1: a lot of the forces that are making it so
0:59
Speaker 1: hard right now to get truthful, independent information. And instead
1:03
Speaker 1: of sharing the first episode of this series, what I
1:05
Speaker 1: actually want to share with you here is the last episode,
1:07
Speaker 1: the eighth episode, where after they've gone through looking at
1:11
Speaker 1: all the different problems facing the media, how we got
1:14
Speaker 1: into this mess here, actually examining their own biases in
1:18
Speaker 1: an episode, very meta, they look at real solutions. What
1:21
Speaker 1: can we do to actually fix this? which I really
1:24
Speaker 1: appreciate and was waiting for the whole series and was
1:27
Speaker 1: so glad that that's how they ended. They have pragmatic
1:30
Speaker 1: solutions about funding, public media, systemic solutions, and then just
1:35
Speaker 1: kind of like an emotional pitch at the end for
1:37
Speaker 1: what people who care about building and rebuilding a vibrant,
1:42
Speaker 1: robust journalism system in the US need to do. It's
1:46
Speaker 1: a great episode. We're going to be back next week
1:48
Speaker 1: with our own new reporting, but in the meantime, I'm
1:50
Speaker 1: excited to share this with you. And if you like it,
1:52
Speaker 1: go check out the rest of the series. Here's the
1:54
Speaker 1: news from Seen on Radio.
1:59
Speaker 2: Now speaking to you from the control room of Studio
2:02
Speaker 2: 41 is the editor of See It Now, Edward R. Murrow.
2:07
Speaker 2: Good evening. Last week they handed out the Pulitzer Prizes.
2:10
Speaker 2: The gold medals went not to a great metropolitan newspaper,
2:13
Speaker 2: but to two weekly papers in North Carolina. One has
2:16
Speaker 2: a circulation of 1,700, the other has a circulation of 5,000.
2:20
Speaker 2: Their editors decided to fight and expose the Ku Klux Klan.
2:25
Speaker 3: This was a big deal in 1953, in the border belt,
2:29
Speaker 3: and it's still an extraordinary story. The news reporter of
2:33
Speaker 3: Whiteville and another small-town weekly paper, the Tabor City Tribune,
2:38
Speaker 3: became the first non-daily newspapers to win the prestigious Pulitzer
2:43
Speaker 3: for Public Service award. Whiteville and Tabor City are 20
2:47
Speaker 3: miles apart, both in Columbus County, North Carolina.
2:51
Speaker 2: This is Whiteville, the county seat. Near here, the Grand
2:54
Speaker 2: Dragon operated. A man was killed, a house burned, and
2:58
Speaker 2: perhaps 50 citizens flogged. This is the courthouse, where the
3:02
Speaker 2: Klan leaders were tried and convicted.
3:05
Speaker 3: Think of it, small-town papers in the Jim Crow South,
3:09
Speaker 3: taking a bold and risky stand for justice in their community.
3:14
Speaker 3: And this was before the civil rights movement really gained steam,
3:18
Speaker 3: before Brown v. Board of Education, before the Montgomery bus boycott.
3:24
Speaker 3: The editors of the Whiteville and Tabor City newspapers waged
3:27
Speaker 3: campaigns against the Klan for several years in news articles
3:32
Speaker 3: and editorials. They exposed the Klan's meetings and recruiting efforts,
3:37
Speaker 3: its kidnappings and beatings of black and white people, and
3:42
Speaker 3: its ties to local police departments. After federal and state investigations,
3:47
Speaker 3: their reporting culminated in the conviction of over 100 Klansmen,
3:52
Speaker 3: according to the Pulitzers.
3:54
Speaker 4: Can we get you something to drink or a snack?
3:58
Speaker 3: Les High lives in a quiet neighborhood in Whiteville. He
4:02
Speaker 3: was born and raised here. He's in his 60s now.
4:06
Speaker 3: His grandfather, Leslie Thompson, bought the news reporter in 1938.
4:11
Speaker 3: He was the owner and publisher when it won the
4:14
Speaker 3: Pulitzer in 53.
4:15
Speaker 4: That's my grandfather's obituary. I can screenshot this for you
4:20
Speaker 4: to get it to you.
4:21
Speaker 3: Les pages through a scrapbook at his dining room table.
4:25
Speaker 4: My grandfather believed in justice and social justice back in
4:31
Speaker 4: a time where it probably wasn't that popular to do so.
4:34
Speaker 4: But he and Horace Carter and Tabor City, despite economic problems, threats,
4:42
Speaker 4: boycotts of advertising, cancellations, that type of thing, persevered.
4:48
Speaker 3: High's father, Jim, inherited the paper and ran it for decades.
4:53
Speaker 3: As a teenager, Les took photos for the news reporter.
4:57
Speaker 3: He then joined the family business after college, eventually becoming
5:01
Speaker 3: editor and owner. He tells me the 1980s were a
5:05
Speaker 3: heyday for Whiteville, with its strong tobacco economy, and for
5:11
Speaker 3: the news reporter.
5:12
Speaker 4: It's been said many times that to have a strong community,
5:16
Speaker 4: you've got to have a strong newspaper. And so we
5:19
Speaker 4: did have a strong newspaper, and we had a strong community.
5:22
Speaker 4: And we went to all the meetings, and we reported
5:25
Speaker 4: them faithfully and fully and fairly, but we didn't hold
5:29
Speaker 4: back either.
5:31
Speaker 3: Things deteriorated, High says, with the Great Recession and the
5:35
Speaker 3: rise of digital platforms like Facebook that took away the
5:39
Speaker 3: paper's advertisers the familiar national story. By 2021, his paper's
5:45
Speaker 3: readership had declined by more than a third, along with
5:48
Speaker 3: his reporting staff, which went from nine to six.
5:53
Speaker 4: He and his.
5:53
Speaker 3: Family didn't want to cut any more of their longtime reporters.
5:57
Speaker 4: So essentially what happened is we just really cut our
6:00
Speaker 4: salaries a lot in what we took out of the
6:03
Speaker 4: paper to at least try to keep it even. Profits
6:07
Speaker 4: were low.
6:08
Speaker 3: In 2021, Hai's family sold the News Reporter, not to
6:12
Speaker 3: the newspaper chain that now owns the Bladen Journal in
6:16
Speaker 3: the next county or other papers in the area. He
6:20
Speaker 3: sold it to his young editor, who was determined to
6:22
Speaker 3: keep the News Reporter independent and locally owned, and has
6:26
Speaker 3: done so. As for Les, he didn't retire. He started
6:31
Speaker 3: a new online journalistic venture, the Border Belt Independent. Chen Zhirai,
6:37
Speaker 3: let's bring you in here.
6:39
Speaker 5: Hey, John.
6:40
Speaker 3: We're going to hear more from Les about the border
6:43
Speaker 3: belt independent in just a minute. But it's an example
6:47
Speaker 3: of what we're here to talk about in this last
6:49
Speaker 3: episode of the season. How can we, any and all
6:54
Speaker 3: of us, respond to our news crisis.
6:57
Speaker 5: In the U.S.? Yes, here we are. Last episode. And
7:02
Speaker 5: I like the fact that we started by hearing about
7:04
Speaker 5: that Pulitzer Prize winning work that those small newspapers did
7:09
Speaker 5: Back in the 1950s, it's like, yeah, man, that's something
7:12
Speaker 5: journalism could do, right? You know, really just holding people accountable,
7:18
Speaker 5: fighting for justice. It's a good reminder of why we
7:21
Speaker 5: need good journalism so badly.
7:24
Speaker 3: We always have, and I imagine we always will, right?
7:28
Speaker 3: We've spent this season talking about the fact that we
7:31
Speaker 3: don't have nearly enough good journalism, and we have far
7:35
Speaker 3: too much bad journalism in the U.S.
7:37
Speaker 4: These days.
7:38
Speaker 5: And most people would agree with that. But we've also
7:41
Speaker 5: built a case for why our news media is failing.
7:45
Speaker 5: And that has a lot to do with our reliance
7:47
Speaker 5: on overwhelmingly corporate for profit industry and the fact that
7:51
Speaker 5: we don't treat journalism as an essential public good that
7:55
Speaker 5: has to be nurtured, supported and protected.
7:57
Speaker 3: Change when our team was talking about how to approach
8:01
Speaker 3: this last episode, which is about how to move forward,
8:05
Speaker 3: given everything we've we've shown here. you proposed a way
8:09
Speaker 3: of structuring our reporting and our thinking. Talk about journalistic transparency.
8:15
Speaker 3: I'm out here sharing our episode outline with the people.
8:20
Speaker 3: But you talked about three buckets, kind of three categories
8:24
Speaker 3: of action that we need to be talking about here.
8:27
Speaker 2: Yeah.
8:28
Speaker 5: I mean, when you look at the overall, you know,
8:32
Speaker 5: landscape of what we're up against, it just could feel
8:35
Speaker 5: totally overwhelming. But I do think it's possible to sort
8:39
Speaker 5: of discern three things that we have to do if
8:43
Speaker 5: we're going to find our way to a news and
8:44
Speaker 5: information system that's worthy of a real democracy. First, journalism
8:50
Speaker 5: has to survive in the face of economic and political
8:54
Speaker 5: forces that are trying to kill it off.
8:57
Speaker 2: Okay.
8:57
Speaker 3: Job one, survive.
9:00
Speaker 5: Second, I think we sort of have to imagine the
9:03
Speaker 5: journalism we want. We don't want to just be trapped
9:06
Speaker 5: in survival mode.
9:07
Speaker 3: Right.
9:07
Speaker 5: We think folks want to think about what is the
9:10
Speaker 5: positive vision. Well, you know, I'm saying that we can
9:13
Speaker 5: realize how do we what do we want our journalism
9:15
Speaker 5: to be? And so, yeah, I think that has to
9:18
Speaker 5: be the second step.
9:19
Speaker 3: Item number two, imagine something better.
9:22
Speaker 5: And third, I think we have to fight. I mean,
9:24
Speaker 5: we've talked about the forces that are arrayed against us.
9:27
Speaker 5: No one has ever gotten justice in the sort of
9:32
Speaker 5: rights that we have now by. just waiting for them
9:35
Speaker 5: to emerge, right? We literally have to build the power
9:39
Speaker 5: that we're going to need to win these fights. You know,
9:43
Speaker 5: in an organizing world, we say you only win what
9:45
Speaker 5: you organize for.
9:47
Speaker 3: Third, build power.
9:49
Speaker 2: All right.
9:51
Speaker 3: Sounds good to me.
9:51
Speaker 4: So let's do it.
9:57
Speaker 3: From the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, this
10:01
Speaker 3: is Seen on Radio, Season 8, The News, Episode 8.
10:07
Speaker 3: I'm John Bewin, host and producer of the show.
10:10
Speaker 5: I'm Chinjarai Kumaneka, John's co-host for this season. I'm a
10:14
Speaker 5: journalism professor and media scholar at New York University. and
10:18
Speaker 5: a podcast maker and organizer.
10:20
Speaker 3: And Chenj, we're going to have you stay with me
10:23
Speaker 3: through this episode. We can talk about stuff as we go.
10:30
Speaker 3: So let's get to it. And that first item, survival.
10:34
Speaker 2: Yeah.
10:35
Speaker 5: I mean, I think it's important for people to understand that,
10:37
Speaker 5: you know, with all these attacks on journalism, both the
10:42
Speaker 5: kind of corporate attacks where people are, you know, people
10:45
Speaker 5: are getting laid off, but also explicit political attacks, right,
10:49
Speaker 5: on these institutions that folks are fighting to survive, figuring
10:53
Speaker 5: out how to still produce good journalism and face up
10:58
Speaker 5: to all these threats, including, you know, even things like technology. So, yeah,
11:01
Speaker 5: there's a lot of good work being done, and we
11:02
Speaker 5: should talk about it.
11:04
Speaker 3: And that brings us back to Whiteville, North Carolina, and
11:07
Speaker 3: Les High.
11:08
Speaker 4: I started at Borderville Independent in 2021 before we sold
11:13
Speaker 4: The News Reporter.
11:14
Speaker 3: As the publisher and owner of his family's paper, Les
11:18
Speaker 3: had lived the collapse of the business model for local news.
11:23
Speaker 3: He wanted to restore some of what had been lost.
11:26
Speaker 4: Back in the day, if I reported on a school
11:28
Speaker 4: board story and I heard something that just didn't sound right,
11:34
Speaker 4: then I could take a few days, two or three days,
11:37
Speaker 4: to check that out. And now they're just moving on
11:39
Speaker 4: to the next story and then the next story and
11:42
Speaker 4: then the next story. There is no time to do
11:44
Speaker 4: investigative reporting. So I was thinking, how can a small
11:48
Speaker 4: community maintain, have this watchdog in their community, their newspaper?
11:54
Speaker 4: Could we start a nonprofit to augment what they're doing
11:57
Speaker 4: and already doing in these small communities, even though it's
12:00
Speaker 4: greatly diminished?
12:01
Speaker 3: High made a pitch to a North Carolina-based foundation, the
12:05
Speaker 3: Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust. The fortune that established the
12:10
Speaker 3: foundation came from tobacco, the R.J. Reynolds Company, and from
12:15
Speaker 3: a slave-holding history in that family.
12:19
Speaker 2: The Kate B.
12:19
Speaker 3: Reynolds Trust was not a news funder at the time.
12:22
Speaker 3: It mostly makes grants related to health and economic issues.
12:26
Speaker 4: We asked the question, if Kate B. Reynolds is trying
12:30
Speaker 4: to help people, and as a newspaper we're trying to
12:32
Speaker 4: help our communities, how can we do that? How can
12:37
Speaker 4: we make people's lives better If nobody knows what those
12:40
Speaker 4: issues are, or nobody cares what those issues are, and
12:45
Speaker 4: unless you have trustful, reliable news where people can hear
12:50
Speaker 4: about these issues, and then at that point when you
12:52
Speaker 4: know about them or care about them, then you can
12:54
Speaker 4: move forward and try to find solutions to those problems.
12:58
Speaker 4: And that's really where it started.
13:01
Speaker 3: Reynolds made a three-year grant of just under $ 500, 000 to
13:03
Speaker 3: start the Border Belt Independence. The foundation renewed for another
13:10
Speaker 3: three years in 2024. The Independent got another, smaller grant
13:15
Speaker 3: from Press Forward, an organization that supports local newsrooms. The
13:19
Speaker 3: Border Belt's three journalists, with help from freelancers, cover four counties,
13:25
Speaker 3: the same counties we've reported from this season. They've written,
13:29
Speaker 3: for example, about the Lumbee tribe and its campaign for
13:33
Speaker 3: federal recognition, and about the risk of a measles outbreak
13:37
Speaker 3: in the border belt.
13:38
Speaker 4: One of the nice things about what we're doing now
13:41
Speaker 4: is that we can take, if it takes two weeks
13:43
Speaker 4: to do a story, then it takes two weeks.
13:45
Speaker 3: Remember back in episode two, the story of the Bladen
13:49
Speaker 3: Journal printing that outrageous misinformation the day before the 2024
13:53
Speaker 3: election about undocumented immigrants voting? I learned the basics of
13:59
Speaker 3: that incident from the Border Belt Independent. and this is
14:03
Speaker 3: key to understanding the Independent and its goals. Les tells
14:08
Speaker 3: me many of its articles appear in the region's local newspapers,
14:12
Speaker 3: including his old paper, The News Reporter, but also those
14:16
Speaker 3: bare-bones papers in the neighboring counties, The Bladen Journal, The Robisonian,
14:21
Speaker 3: The Laurenburg Exchange.
14:23
Speaker 4: Our stories are published on our website, which is borderbelt.org.
14:27
Speaker 4: We have a weekly newsletter that goes out. We have
14:29
Speaker 4: social media channels. But one thing I think that's been
14:32
Speaker 4: really important is that we essentially are a news service,
14:35
Speaker 4: a free news service for the papers in the community.
14:38
Speaker 4: And the idea was that we would give them extra
14:41
Speaker 4: added value so they could survive. And we don't charge,
14:47
Speaker 4: we don't sell advertising because we don't want to compete
14:50
Speaker 4: with those newspapers. So it worked both ways. It allowed
14:53
Speaker 4: them to have stories that they couldn't write, but it
14:56
Speaker 4: allowed us a bigger audience for us to get our
14:59
Speaker 4: stories out to the public.
15:00
Speaker 5: I want to highlight what Les just said. The Border
15:03
Speaker 5: Belt Independent gives its articles to the newspapers in the
15:07
Speaker 5: area for free. And it doesn't sell advertising at all.
15:12
Speaker 5: So they don't have to take advertising dollars that the
15:14
Speaker 5: for-profit newspapers need. I mean, that's really something.
15:19
Speaker 3: In yet another collaborative move, the Border Belt Independent, the BBI,
15:24
Speaker 3: joined forces with the Assembly. That's a growing statewide for-profit
15:30
Speaker 3: news organization founded in 2021 and based in Durham, North Carolina.
15:36
Speaker 3: Becoming part of the assembly gave the BBI a more
15:39
Speaker 3: sustainable financial footing, and it adds to its audience because
15:45
Speaker 3: some independent articles appear in the assembly.
15:48
Speaker 4: Collaboration is so important now because, again, back in the
15:52
Speaker 4: day when it was blood sport and we were all competing,
15:55
Speaker 4: that's not going to come back. because of the fiscal difficulties.
16:02
Speaker 3: Chance, this is something you hear from people who are
16:05
Speaker 3: working to repair our crumbling news media, especially at the
16:09
Speaker 3: local level. You hear a lot about people replacing the
16:13
Speaker 3: old way of doing things, you know, the competition for readers, listeners,
16:18
Speaker 3: and advertiser dollars, replacing that with collaboration.
16:22
Speaker 5: That makes a lot of sense. As we just heard,
16:25
Speaker 5: Sometimes nonprofit and for-profit outlets are partnering. And some partnerships
16:30
Speaker 5: cross mediums, say public broadcasters joining forces with local newspapers.
16:36
Speaker 5: That's happened in places like Oregon and around Dallas, Texas.
16:39
Speaker 3: Of course, there's a lot of nonprofit journalism out there.
16:43
Speaker 3: And we should highlight it because we've been talking so
16:47
Speaker 3: much about the structural problems with corporate for-profit media. I
16:52
Speaker 3: don't know how much folks pay attention to whether the
16:55
Speaker 3: news media they're consuming is for-profit or non-profit. So let's
16:59
Speaker 3: just mention a few long-standing non-profit national outlets. Of course,
17:05
Speaker 3: there's public broadcasting supported in part by the audience, including
17:10
Speaker 3: PBS and NPR, but also the Pacifica Network, which is
17:14
Speaker 3: best known for Democracy Now!
17:17
Speaker 5: Others include ProPublica, The Intercept, the Center for Investigative Reporting,
17:22
Speaker 5: which produces Mother Jones magazine, and also Reveal, the investigative
17:26
Speaker 5: podcast and public radio show.
17:28
Speaker 3: Seen on Radio has partnered with Reveal a couple of times.
17:33
Speaker 3: There's a bunch of nonprofits that operate at the local
17:36
Speaker 3: and regional level, to name a few, the Texas Tribune,
17:40
Speaker 3: the Mississippi Free Press, the Baltimore Banner in New York, Documented,
17:45
Speaker 3: and the City Reporter. Outlier Media in Detroit, Resolve Philly,
17:51
Speaker 3: and in Chicago, City Bureau.
17:55
Speaker 5: All those organizations are doing really exciting stuff. And most
17:59
Speaker 5: of them have an explicit bottom-up mission, telling the stories
18:03
Speaker 5: of regular people and inviting community folks to shape their reporting.
18:10
Speaker 5: These outlets can fill important gaps, but their impact does
18:14
Speaker 5: have some limits up against the media giant's. Small nonprofits
18:18
Speaker 5: only have resources to do so much, and they usually
18:22
Speaker 5: don't attract the same kind of audience that the big
18:24
Speaker 5: fish do.
18:25
Speaker 3: To give a sense of the challenge, the journalism school
18:29
Speaker 3: at Northwestern counted almost 700 standalone digital news sites across
18:35
Speaker 3: the country in 2025. That includes nonprofit and for-profit newsrooms.
18:42
Speaker 3: But those 700 sites Organizations don't come close to replacing
18:46
Speaker 3: the more than 3,000 local newspapers that have gone under
18:50
Speaker 3: in the last 20 years.
18:52
Speaker 5: The reality is that philanthropy is not going to solve
18:55
Speaker 5: the structural problems with our news media. There aren't enough
18:58
Speaker 5: foundation grants to support a robust news ecosystem.
19:02
Speaker 3: And the grants that are given go overwhelmingly to newsrooms
19:06
Speaker 3: in big cities. The J School at Northwestern found that 95%
19:11
Speaker 3: of foundation dollars for journalism go to outlets in urban places.
19:17
Speaker 3: So that's not fixing most of the news desert problem.
19:22
Speaker 3: As for government and the role that the public sector
19:26
Speaker 3: can play in helping journalism survive.
19:29
Speaker 5: Well, we know that's not happening at the federal level
19:31
Speaker 5: right now. Asking what the Trump administration is going to
19:35
Speaker 5: do to strengthen independent journalism... It's like asking how many
19:39
Speaker 5: wind turbines it's going to build. You know, it's just.
19:43
Speaker 5: But some state governments understand the crisis and are trying
19:46
Speaker 5: to do something about it.
19:47
Speaker 3: Yes, various states have conceded. taking action, and a few
19:51
Speaker 3: have passed bills. For example, offering tax credits to help
19:56
Speaker 3: newsrooms hire or keep their reporters, or creating scholarship programs
20:01
Speaker 3: for future journalists. Illinois passed the Strengthening Community Media Act,
20:06
Speaker 3: which took effect in 2025. One part of that law
20:10
Speaker 3: requires owners of news organizations to give several months' notice
20:14
Speaker 3: if they plan to sell to an out-of-state buyer. That's
20:18
Speaker 3: meant to give local groups a chance to make offers
20:21
Speaker 3: and maybe prevent some sales to big chains and corporations.
20:26
Speaker 5: These efforts are small so far, but they show there's
20:29
Speaker 5: a growing recognition that governments should be involved in shoring
20:32
Speaker 5: up the news media.
20:33
Speaker 3: For anyone interested in finding out if anything along these
20:37
Speaker 3: lines is happening in their state... A group called the
20:40
Speaker 3: Media Power Collaborative is tracking programs or proposals in more
20:45
Speaker 3: than 15 states, all projects aimed at supporting local news.
20:50
Speaker 6: A federal jury ruled against former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin
20:54
Speaker 6: in a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times. Palin
20:57
Speaker 6: sued the newspaper in 2017.
20:59
Speaker 3: One more threat to journalism that people are working to
21:02
Speaker 3: guard against. Powerful people filing frivolous lawsuits against reporters and
21:08
Speaker 3: news organizations. to create hassles and force them to hire
21:12
Speaker 3: lawyers to defend themselves. Your school, CHENS, the Arthur L.
21:17
Speaker 3: Carter Journalism Institute at NYU, has created a database tracking
21:22
Speaker 3: alleged SLAPs, that's Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.
21:28
Speaker 2: Yes.
21:29
Speaker 3: The goal of the database is to shine a light
21:31
Speaker 3: on these lawsuits that are designed to have a chilling
21:34
Speaker 3: effect on journalism. An example of a SLAP in the
21:38
Speaker 3: 2010s The nonprofit Mother Jones said it spent $ 3 million
21:44
Speaker 3: in legal fees defending itself against a defamation lawsuit by
21:48
Speaker 3: a donor to presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, the U.S.
21:53
Speaker 3: Supreme Court here in the summer of 2026 declined to
21:57
Speaker 3: take up a case that could have challenged the landmark
22:00
Speaker 3: ruling Sullivan v. The New York Times from 1964. That's
22:05
Speaker 3: the case that creates a high bar of actual malice
22:09
Speaker 3: for people suing news organizations for defamation, basically protecting journalists
22:15
Speaker 3: who make mistakes in good faith. A couple members of
22:18
Speaker 3: the court have expressed an interest in revisiting Sullivan. But
22:23
Speaker 3: for now, that important protection of journalists' First Amendment rights
22:27
Speaker 3: lives on.
22:29
Speaker 5: Before we wrap up this survival category, let's take a
22:32
Speaker 5: minute to talk about the international perspective. We've talked a
22:36
Speaker 5: lot about the U.S. being an outlier among rich countries
22:40
Speaker 5: and having a mostly corporate system and weak public media.
22:44
Speaker 5: But other countries are facing similar problems. They might have
22:47
Speaker 5: lessons for us in the U.S.
22:49
Speaker 3: The Canadian government in 2019 launched a $ 600 million initiative
22:54
Speaker 3: to support the nation's news industry, including a tax credit
22:58
Speaker 3: that reimburses folks for a fraction of what they spend
23:01
Speaker 3: on news subscriptions. so really just a government subsidy for
23:05
Speaker 3: the press. In France, funding for the public broadcasting system
23:10
Speaker 3: has gone down, and far-right parties have proposed defunding the
23:15
Speaker 3: system almost entirely.
23:17
Speaker 5: Sounds familiar.
23:18
Speaker 3: In response, a coalition of independent news outlets, journalists, and
23:23
Speaker 3: non-profit leaders launched a public interest cooperative called Co-op Media.
23:29
Speaker 3: where citizens and media organizations can buy in and help
23:34
Speaker 3: fund independent journalism ventures. They've raised about 2 million euros,
23:39
Speaker 3: last I heard, and about 70 independent outlets, including some
23:43
Speaker 3: that are well-known nationally, have joined the cooperative.
23:50
Speaker 5: So that's bucket number one, folks working hard to keep
23:53
Speaker 5: good journalism alive. But next, we want to move past
23:57
Speaker 5: survival mode. What is the journalism system that we want?
24:01
Speaker 5: What is the systemic change that could bring us a
24:03
Speaker 5: much stronger media system? And what would it take to
24:07
Speaker 5: make that happen?
24:27
Speaker 3: We have talked a few times on Scene on Radio
24:30
Speaker 3: about public goods and how they went so badly out
24:35
Speaker 3: of style in our time of raging neoliberalism.
24:40
Speaker 5: But we got to come up with a sexier name
24:41
Speaker 5: for them. It sounds so boring.
24:45
Speaker 2: Right.
24:46
Speaker 5: You know what I mean?
24:47
Speaker 3: It sounds so earnest.
24:48
Speaker 5: But public, yeah, but like, meanwhile, these are things I love.
24:51
Speaker 5: Public schools, public parks, public libraries.
24:55
Speaker 3: Right.
24:56
Speaker 5: And of course, radical institutions like the post office.
25:00
Speaker 4: Right.
25:01
Speaker 3: All of that stuff. It seems, I don't know, a
25:04
Speaker 3: little bit communist now. Or we should probably just say woke.
25:08
Speaker 3: The postal service is woke.
25:11
Speaker 5: Yeah. You know, I got to say, man, I'm so
25:13
Speaker 5: glad people created these things a century or two ago.
25:16
Speaker 5: Because can you imagine somebody proposing these things right now?
25:20
Speaker 5: Like at a time when the mantra is, if the
25:23
Speaker 5: market doesn't provide it, You know, we're not going to
25:25
Speaker 5: have it.
25:26
Speaker 3: We're better off without it, yeah.
25:27
Speaker 5: And then somebody's like, yeah, what about if we had
25:30
Speaker 5: all these public goods?
25:31
Speaker 3: And when I say public goods went out of style,
25:35
Speaker 3: I'm saying that with a look on my face because
25:39
Speaker 3: we know that's not exactly what happened.
25:41
Speaker 5: Nah, I mean, public goods were systematically discredited by people
25:47
Speaker 5: who want a price tag on everything and the politicians
25:51
Speaker 5: who represent those folks.
25:52
Speaker 3: But who knows? Maybe those of us who want more
25:56
Speaker 3: nice things will finally get together and turn things around.
26:00
Speaker 3: That could even happen soonish. But before we get to
26:05
Speaker 3: the question of how to build the power to create
26:09
Speaker 3: big change, it's worth thinking about the world we want
26:13
Speaker 3: to live in. In this case, the kind of news
26:16
Speaker 3: and information system we want to build. So This gets
26:21
Speaker 3: us to the second item on our agenda, Change, imagining
26:26
Speaker 3: the journalism we want.
26:28
Speaker 5: Yeah, man. You know, it's like, I mean, it was
26:31
Speaker 5: funny about telling people that all public institutions are too
26:34
Speaker 5: woke or that every new idea someone has is unrealistic.
26:38
Speaker 5: Is that you're also telling people we can't dream, right?
26:42
Speaker 5: But meanwhile, all those different institutions that we listed were
26:46
Speaker 5: systems that movements dreamt and struggled into existence, right? And
26:51
Speaker 5: I think it's also important because it's not like nobody
26:53
Speaker 5: has thought about these things or has any idea what
26:55
Speaker 5: to do.
26:56
Speaker 2: Yeah.
26:57
Speaker 5: I mean, some stuff is very easy to imagine, right?
26:59
Speaker 5: Like low-hanging fruit, like building enough political power to restore
27:03
Speaker 5: the corporation for public broadcasting. And of course, you should
27:07
Speaker 5: fund it like you never have before. I mean, under
27:11
Speaker 5: that scenario, you might have a public media system as
27:13
Speaker 5: strong as other rich countries have.
27:16
Speaker 3: You mean that the richest country in the world, in
27:19
Speaker 3: the aggregate, A nation with a trillion dollar defense budget
27:23
Speaker 3: could potentially spend as much per capita on public media
27:26
Speaker 3: as Switzerland does or Norway.
27:29
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know.
27:30
Speaker 3: Come on.
27:31
Speaker 5: Crazy talk, right?
27:33
Speaker 3: Pie in the sky.
27:34
Speaker 5: We could also revive and build on some of those
27:37
Speaker 5: rules that were killed off over the last few decades
27:39
Speaker 5: that required media organizations to serve the public and not
27:43
Speaker 5: just their shareholders.
27:44
Speaker 3: And maybe some limitations on ownership, right? And corporate concentration
27:49
Speaker 3: in the media. We could bring those back. But people
27:53
Speaker 3: have come up with other bold plans too. I think
27:55
Speaker 3: the kind of thing that most of us are not
27:57
Speaker 3: used to hearing about. And let's bring in Victor Picard
28:01
Speaker 3: again of the University of Pennsylvania. He's one of the
28:04
Speaker 3: leading thinkers about media. What's gone wrong and how we
28:08
Speaker 3: could transform it. And he represents a set of progressive
28:12
Speaker 3: ideas that have been around for quite a while, right?
28:15
Speaker 7: For sure.
28:16
Speaker 5: Including from folks like the late Robert McChesney. He was
28:20
Speaker 5: a mentor to Victor and to a lot of us
28:22
Speaker 5: who study media.
28:23
Speaker 3: This is one of Victor's proposals.
28:25
Speaker 7: If there is no commercial future for journalism, we need
28:28
Speaker 7: to find a non-commercial future. And, you know, I think
28:32
Speaker 7: the obvious choice is to try to create some kind
28:34
Speaker 7: of public media system. And I don't mean just throwing
28:37
Speaker 7: some more money at NPR and PBS, but actually perhaps
28:41
Speaker 7: building upon that already made, that ready-made public infrastructure along
28:46
Speaker 7: with post offices and, you know, public libraries, like we've
28:51
Speaker 7: got these wonderful public resources and spaces, but to use
28:55
Speaker 7: those as building blocks towards a new national but very
28:59
Speaker 7: localized public media system.
29:02
Speaker 5: So Victor's talking about a very different kind of public media.
29:06
Speaker 5: You could almost imagine it as a whole other layer
29:08
Speaker 5: that would exist alongside the one we're familiar with.
29:11
Speaker 7: And, you know, I've argued, and it sounds very utopian
29:13
Speaker 7: on its face, but I think it's also very practical
29:17
Speaker 7: to that we need to imagine a new kind of
29:19
Speaker 7: anchor institution, what I refer to as a public media center, PMC,
29:25
Speaker 7: where every community has this local public space. Again, it
29:29
Speaker 7: might be in a post office, it might be in
29:31
Speaker 7: a public library, it might be in a former public
29:33
Speaker 7: broadcasting outlet. It serves as a multimedia hub, and it's
29:38
Speaker 7: actually owned and controlled by by local communities themselves. So
29:42
Speaker 7: really what I'm calling for is a public media system
29:45
Speaker 7: that's public not just in name, but it's actually owned
29:48
Speaker 7: and controlled by the public. It's federally guaranteed but locally governed.
29:53
Speaker 5: Notice Victor's last words, locally governed. So he's imagining a
29:58
Speaker 5: federally funded system and one funded on a much bigger
30:02
Speaker 5: scale than America's half-hearted venture into public media ever was.
30:06
Speaker 3: He envisions the government spending billions and maybe tens of
30:09
Speaker 3: billions of dollars a year on this network of media centers.
30:14
Speaker 3: But again, the decisions about how to spend that money
30:17
Speaker 3: would be made in local communities.
30:20
Speaker 5: We do this with other essential public goods. The federal
30:23
Speaker 5: government spends tens of billions of dollars a year on
30:25
Speaker 5: roads and highways... And a lot of that money goes
30:28
Speaker 5: to grants for projects that people want at the state
30:31
Speaker 5: or local level.
30:32
Speaker 3: Why couldn't we have a media system like that? If
30:35
Speaker 3: we understand that a high-quality news and information system that's
30:40
Speaker 3: accessible to everyone is just as necessary as the roads
30:45
Speaker 3: and bridges we use to get around.
30:47
Speaker 5: When you said accessible to everyone, you know, it made
30:50
Speaker 5: me think about participatory media. As Victor has put it,
30:54
Speaker 5: and actually lots of folks, we need news not just
30:57
Speaker 5: about and for the people or about and for diverse communities,
31:02
Speaker 5: but also news by the people. So if you're not
31:04
Speaker 5: satisfied with the media, you could be the media. And look,
31:08
Speaker 5: I know there's people who are like, well, what about
31:10
Speaker 5: social media? I'm being the media on social media. And
31:13
Speaker 5: I think that's good. But, you know, I used to
31:17
Speaker 5: go to a lot of protests related to police brutality,
31:20
Speaker 5: for example, John, you know, and One thing I saw
31:24
Speaker 5: was like everybody would go to that place and be
31:26
Speaker 5: making social media. But it was different when you had
31:30
Speaker 5: a local institution really reporting that's going to be there
31:34
Speaker 5: year round. You know what I'm saying? It just makes
31:36
Speaker 5: a difference in how communities get reported on. And actually,
31:40
Speaker 5: I think a lot of us could be producers and
31:42
Speaker 5: storytellers and really learn this craft and be supported through
31:46
Speaker 5: these public media centers.
31:47
Speaker 3: Think about what that could mean in a news desert
31:50
Speaker 3: like those. places in southeastern North Carolina that we visited
31:54
Speaker 3: in this series. If you give everyone potentially access to
31:59
Speaker 3: the tools of media making, you probably start to have
32:02
Speaker 3: more people doing journalism in places where there's a real
32:06
Speaker 3: scarcity of reporters now. And that could have an effect
32:11
Speaker 3: on how people engage in the life of their communities.
32:17
Speaker 3: Here's a separate proposal to democratize the media system And
32:22
Speaker 3: I'm sure you know about this change because it was
32:25
Speaker 3: championed by your late, great colleague, Robert McChesney. He died
32:30
Speaker 3: too young in 2025. His idea was federal vouchers for
32:36
Speaker 3: individual Americans to support the nonprofit journalism of our choice. Yes.
32:43
Speaker 5: So this is based on an idea first proposed by
32:45
Speaker 5: an economist named Dean Baker more than 20 years ago
32:49
Speaker 5: to support creative work more broadly. So McChesney published a
32:53
Speaker 5: book in 2013, and listen to this title, Digital Disconnect,
32:58
Speaker 5: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy.
33:02
Speaker 3: Capitalism undermining democracy. Okay, who would have thunk it?
33:09
Speaker 5: And in that book, Bob proposed that the government would
33:11
Speaker 5: give every American a voucher, at the time he was
33:14
Speaker 5: suggesting $ 200 a year, that each of us could donate
33:18
Speaker 5: to a non-profit, non-commercial journalism outlet. It could be a
33:22
Speaker 5: public radio station or a national investigative publication or a
33:26
Speaker 5: community news source in your neighborhood.
33:29
Speaker 3: This is Robert McChesney talking about the idea in an
33:32
Speaker 3: interview with C-SPAN in 2013. The government would have no
33:36
Speaker 3: control over who got the money.
33:37
Speaker 6: It would be purely up to individuals how they wanted
33:39
Speaker 6: to dedicate their $ 200. And this would mean that all
33:43
Speaker 6: those websites right now that are just absolutely struggling, if
33:45
Speaker 6: they could convince 2,000 people in their community to give
33:47
Speaker 6: them their $ 200, well, suddenly 2,000 people, that generates $ 400, 000.
33:52
Speaker 6: You can actually have a heck of a good product
33:54
Speaker 6: in a neighborhood of a community of $ 400, 000. If you
33:57
Speaker 6: do a great job the next year, you might have
33:58
Speaker 6: 10 times that much. So you produce great competition. You
34:02
Speaker 6: have no government control. You have a massive public subsidy.
34:04
Speaker 6: So we can, again, have people make a living doing
34:06
Speaker 6: journalism in competing newsrooms.
34:09
Speaker 3: I like this idea. And look, he talks about what
34:13
Speaker 3: a small journalism outfit could do with $ 400, 000. The border
34:18
Speaker 3: belt independent got off the ground with a $ 500, 000 grant.
34:22
Speaker 3: So imagine that any group of a few thousand people
34:26
Speaker 3: could use their vouchers to support a journalistic resource like
34:30
Speaker 3: that for their community or their region.
34:33
Speaker 2: Right.
34:34
Speaker 5: Bob was imagining that each of us would get a
34:36
Speaker 5: $ 200 voucher.
34:36
Speaker 2: I mean, that's.
34:39
Speaker 5: Here in New York, that's like the price of two drinks.
34:43
Speaker 5: But I mean, seriously, like, talk about a small-D democratic
34:46
Speaker 5: way of bolstering independent news and media making. These are
34:50
Speaker 5: the kind of ideas we could be talking about, and
34:53
Speaker 5: politicians could be debating if we had any kind of
34:56
Speaker 5: healthy understanding of how essential a robust independent news media
35:00
Speaker 5: is in a democratic society.
35:03
Speaker 3: Now, ideas like these from Picard and McChesney may sound
35:09
Speaker 3: like a pipe dream in our political environment in 2026.
35:15
Speaker 3: You heard Victor himself say his publicly funded media center
35:19
Speaker 3: plan sounds utopian.
35:21
Speaker 5: I mean, the shift in our politics and economy that
35:23
Speaker 5: it would take to make stuff like that possible feels
35:26
Speaker 5: very far away. I get it. But this is where
35:29
Speaker 5: I want to segue to that third category of action.
35:33
Speaker 5: You know, journalists, we're used to documenting the fight, reporting
35:35
Speaker 5: about the fight. When it comes to this, our media systems,
35:40
Speaker 5: I think we have to fight. We have to build
35:42
Speaker 5: the power to make the change we want to see.
35:45
Speaker 5: And the first thing to understand is that a transformation
35:48
Speaker 5: of our media system is only going to come about
35:50
Speaker 5: in alignment with other movements on other issues.
35:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't really imagine these things happening in a vacuum,
35:59
Speaker 3: separate from other deep changes that would almost necessarily be
36:04
Speaker 3: happening at the same time, right? Changes in our economic reality,
36:08
Speaker 3: changes in our political system that is so deeply captured
36:13
Speaker 3: and controlled by the very richest people and so on.
36:17
Speaker 5: And look, one of the most self-defeating things I think
36:20
Speaker 5: we can do is to shrug and go, well, that'll
36:23
Speaker 5: never happen. Because the people who did this to our
36:26
Speaker 5: media system, they don't think like that.
36:29
Speaker 3: Right.
36:29
Speaker 5: I mean, and there's a lot of people who thought
36:31
Speaker 5: the absurd situation that the U.S. is in right now
36:34
Speaker 5: with a brazenly authoritarian regime in power. People thought that
36:38
Speaker 5: couldn't happen. But, you know, folks on the far right
36:41
Speaker 5: and in the corporate class were like, no, we think
36:44
Speaker 5: it can happen. And they got to work for decades
36:47
Speaker 5: to bring us to this place.
36:49
Speaker 3: Victor Picard made that point in our interview. He says
36:53
Speaker 3: we should be pushing for the media system we want
36:56
Speaker 3: in the year 2050.
36:57
Speaker 7: Other political interests in society have been very successful about,
37:02
Speaker 7: you know, planning and incubating these ideas that take many
37:06
Speaker 7: decades to come to fruition. And I think we're living
37:08
Speaker 7: through that scenario right now under the Trump administration. So
37:13
Speaker 7: I do think that, you know, progressives need to also,
37:17
Speaker 7: and I don't mean to just say political progressives, just people,
37:20
Speaker 7: and I think this is a bipartisan concern, people who
37:23
Speaker 7: recognize that what we all learn in school is true.
37:25
Speaker 7: We need a free and functional news media system for
37:30
Speaker 7: democracy to survive. And that's how we need to start
37:34
Speaker 7: framing this.
37:40
Speaker 5: Victor's talking about a change in mindset that should lead
37:43
Speaker 5: to action. We have to put away the passive acceptance
37:47
Speaker 5: of a corporate dominated media system that's not working. I mean,
37:51
Speaker 5: it's working for those who control it. but it's not
37:54
Speaker 5: working for the rest of us. And the thing is,
37:56
Speaker 5: if you listen to this season, you know we wouldn't
37:59
Speaker 5: be the first generation to fight that fight. Think about
38:03
Speaker 5: all the journalists in the alternative press, from Ida B.
38:05
Speaker 5: Wells to Ida Tarbell and the other muckrakers.
38:09
Speaker 3: And the media critics and reformers, the people who called
38:13
Speaker 3: out yellow journalism in the early 20th century, the ones
38:17
Speaker 3: who led the public interest moment in the middle of
38:20
Speaker 3: the last century that brought us public broadcastings and other
38:24
Speaker 3: really valuable changes.
38:26
Speaker 5: And all the people still fighting now, folks in the
38:28
Speaker 5: alternative and nonprofit media, independent journalists, and yes, folks working
38:34
Speaker 5: in corporate and mainstream media who do what they can
38:37
Speaker 5: to report the most important stuff. We can't lose sight
38:40
Speaker 5: of the sacrifices and contributions that all those people have
38:44
Speaker 5: made over the years. And I actually feel them looking
38:47
Speaker 5: at us now and going, yeah, you're right to be pissed,
38:51
Speaker 5: but these problems didn't start with you. And you don't
38:54
Speaker 5: get to give up.
38:55
Speaker 3: There's a message there for all of us, I think,
38:58
Speaker 3: about doing what we can to make the state of
39:01
Speaker 3: American journalism a live issue, right? One that politicians are
39:06
Speaker 3: asked about and have to do something about. We need
39:10
Speaker 3: to pressure people with power to take a position. We
39:14
Speaker 3: can also be thoughtful in our choices individually about the
39:18
Speaker 3: kind of media we consume and spend our money to support.
39:23
Speaker 3: But it really has to be about systemic change, doesn't it? So, Change,
39:29
Speaker 3: maybe this is... a fitting note to end on. You
39:33
Speaker 3: alluded to journalists, but say more about journalists themselves. What
39:39
Speaker 3: would you want to say to them, to us, about
39:43
Speaker 3: the role we need to play in moving towards a
39:46
Speaker 3: better and more democratic news and information system?
39:50
Speaker 5: When we get into the kind of crises that we
39:52
Speaker 5: tend to get into, a lot of journalists I know,
39:55
Speaker 5: folks who are skilled and well-meaning, tend to just, like,
40:00
Speaker 5: report harder. We just report more, you know, and that's
40:04
Speaker 5: what we think our job is. And yes, this series
40:06
Speaker 5: has established that the best journalists don't sit on the sidelines,
40:10
Speaker 5: but it has to be more than that. Journalists don't
40:14
Speaker 5: get a pass on organizing and participating in movements. Unless
40:18
Speaker 5: we expect everybody else to fight for our most important
40:21
Speaker 5: institutions while we kick back and write and hold mics
40:24
Speaker 5: and cameras and just describe shit, right? I mean, we're
40:27
Speaker 5: at a point where we have to fight to keep
40:29
Speaker 5: our microphones and to keep the channels of communication open.
40:33
Speaker 5: And actually, a crucial piece of this is the only
40:36
Speaker 5: way we're going to win is if we can merge
40:38
Speaker 5: or join with the power of other movements, with millions
40:41
Speaker 5: of people who have stakes in this fight, but who
40:44
Speaker 5: also can bring legal power, policy power, political power. in
40:48
Speaker 5: many places who can register voters, protest, create media pressure, strike,
40:53
Speaker 5: and shut shit down. And then when they ask what
40:56
Speaker 5: we want, news media has to be right there on
40:59
Speaker 5: the list with everything else. There's one thing I've learned
41:03
Speaker 5: about this country and really this world. It's movement power
41:06
Speaker 5: that allows us to assert our better visions when the
41:09
Speaker 5: mechanisms of democracy and education have been co-opted. Movement power
41:14
Speaker 5: is crucial for democracy. And for those who understand that,
41:19
Speaker 5: it's probably because people on the street and journalists are
41:22
Speaker 5: reporting it.
41:24
Speaker 3: There's a quote that feels relevant here. I don't know
41:28
Speaker 3: if you've heard it. It goes like this. Only a
41:31
Speaker 3: crisis produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions
41:37
Speaker 3: that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.
41:43
Speaker 3: And the person who said this went on to say
41:45
Speaker 3: that That's what you have to do if you want
41:48
Speaker 3: deep change. You develop alternatives, right? Imagine the world you want.
41:53
Speaker 3: And you keep those ideas alive until the politically impossible
41:58
Speaker 3: becomes politically inevitable.
42:03
Speaker 5: Until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable. Sounds powerful.
42:09
Speaker 3: So now who said it? Milton Friedman. The arch-conservative... neoliberal economist.
42:17
Speaker 5: John, why would you have me feeling feelings about a
42:23
Speaker 5: quote from Milton Friedman? But I actually think it's actually
42:28
Speaker 5: really instructive that that quote comes from Friedman because it
42:31
Speaker 5: shows that the people who were invested in attacking public
42:36
Speaker 5: goods and really, in a lot of ways, attacking the
42:38
Speaker 5: foundations of democracy, they're clear on building power. You know,
42:44
Speaker 5: and I think that, if anything, underscores the fact that
42:48
Speaker 5: we got to get clear on it and get clear
42:50
Speaker 5: about what we have to do.
42:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think as a theory of change, it's spot on.
43:00
Speaker 3: Thanks so much, man, for coming back and making another
43:03
Speaker 3: season with Seen on Radio. It is always such a
43:07
Speaker 3: great pleasure and honor to work with you.
43:10
Speaker 5: Man, thanks for the reporting you did, John. You really,
43:13
Speaker 5: you know, you gave a big part of your life
43:16
Speaker 5: to this, man. And I really appreciate it. And I
43:20
Speaker 5: really hope that this series gives us a better vocabulary
43:24
Speaker 5: and a place to start, you know, to try to
43:27
Speaker 5: change this.
43:29
Speaker 3: Watch this space. This is probably not the last word
43:33
Speaker 3: on this season and on the news. The news was
43:39
Speaker 3: created and produced by me, John Bewin, with Chenjerai Kumunika
43:44
Speaker 3: and story editor Diane Hodson. Assistant producer Arlene Arevalo. Fact-checking
43:51
Speaker 3: by Anna Pujol-Mazzini. Music by Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band,
43:57
Speaker 3: Michelle Osis, Lily Hayden, Alex Weston, James Nathan-Jones, Goodnight Lucas,
44:03
Speaker 3: and Jason Hill. Music consulting by Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.
44:10
Speaker 3: You can find transcripts and other information about the show
44:13
Speaker 3: and the team at our website, xenonradio.org. Big thanks to
44:19
Speaker 3: everyone at the Kenan Institute, which made this season possible.
44:24
Speaker 3: In particular, Sarah Rogers, our Head of Communications, and Institute
44:29
Speaker 3: Director David Toole. No generative AI was used in the research, writing, production,
44:37
Speaker 3: or any other facet of this project. The show is
44:41
Speaker 3: distributed by our good friends at PRX. Seen on Radio
44:46
Speaker 3: comes to you from the Kenan Institute for Ethics at
44:49
Speaker 3: Duke University.