Steve Coll on journalism in this disrupted world

Journo

“We have to recognise that the truth is often complex. And it's often elusive in some respects. And it's nuanced. That's not an excuse for enabling liars or for being complicit in propaganda campaigns.”

From inside the Washington Post on the day the Drudge Report cracked open the Clinton scandal, through the digital disruption of the past 20 years, double Pulitzer Prize winner and Dean of Columbia Journalism School Steve Coll unpacks how the business of journalism has undergone a transformation over his working life.

He walks us through his years in newsrooms, as a correspondent in South Asia, to leading the team at the Washington Post and Columbia.

He talks partisanship and false equivalence (“both sides journalism”), the dominance of Facebook and Google, and whether the media is responsible for the election of Donald Trump.

Host Nick Bryant asks Steve Coll about his hopes for the latest generation of journalists, the missteps the industry has made in the past, and dissects how the world’s best journalists can continue to report in unstable times.

Steve Coll is a member of JNI’s International Advisory Council.

Journo is a production of Deadset Studios. This episode was made with support from the Judith Neilson Institute.

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