The Kicker

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, most media coverage has focused on the ongoing physical health disaster and the need to convince readers and elected officials to take action. But the coverage is also a chronic source of trauma. Now that there is some good news interspersed with the tragedy, we struggle to find a balance.Dr. Alison Holman is a health psychologist and professor at the University of California Irvine’s Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing, whose work focuses on exposure to traumatic events such as Ebola outbreaks, the Boston Marathon bombing, and, most recently, Covid-19. On this week’s Kicker, Holman joins Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to discuss journalism’s impact on readers’ mental health, and why traumatic coverage can fail to motivate change.

Refusing to learn female reporters’ names, to speak on the record, to refrain from embarrassing comments. The Andrew Cuomo that political reporters know is entirely different from the pandemic persona during the worst moments of the coronavirus crisis.On this week’s Kicker, Josefa Velásquez, the Albany reporter for THE CITY, who has covered Cuomo for a decade, and Michael Powell, a New York Times national reporter who covered the collapse of both Rudy Giuliani and Elliot Spitzer, join Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to describe the Cuomo persona that has been an open secret.

Last year, Michael Tubbs was the focus of an HBO documentary, "Stockton On My Mind," that followed his experience trying to reinvent Stockton, California as the city’s first African-American mayor. Within a few months, however, with his campaign for re-election coming up, Tubbs was subjected to a targeted disinformation campaign, by a fake news website called the 209 Times. Named for the area code of Stockton, the 209 Times claims to be "an independent community driven grassroots news source." In reality, it functions as a misinformation machine, trading on the relatively high levels of trust in local press outlets to spread lies about Tubbs and play on voters' racist biases. Come November, Tubbs was unseated. He joins us today on The Kicker, speaking with CJR contributor Akintunde Ahmad about disinformation, news deserts, racism, and what he's up to now.

Burmese journalist Swe Win has survived an assasination attempt and detention by his own government. Now he leads his Yangon-based news outlet Myanmar Now from exile, and his newsroom is in hiding.On this week’s Kicker, reporter and essayist E. Tammy Kim, and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, speak with Swe Win about journalism under threat in Myanmar, and why he so desperately wants to return despite the threat.

On this week’s Kicker, Kathleen Belew, a historian at the University of Chicago and author of Bring The War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (2018), joins Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to discuss how the events of January 6th are already being misrepresented in press coverage and how reporters should be framing the ongoing threat.

GameStop, Reddit, and who hacked the system by Columbia Journalism Review

Shirish Dáte had a front row seat to the chaos of Trump’s presidency and famously asked Trump whether he regretted having lied so many times to the American people. Dáte was also in attendance at the first, radically different press briefing on inauguration day.On this week’s Kicker, Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, and Dáte, HuffPost’s senior White House correspondent, discuss what needs to change in the way the press corps covers a presidency, and why the destruction of the Republican party is a major political story of our time.

In the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, journalists struggled to cover the devastation in a way that resonated, much as they do with the Covid-19 pandemic today. In “Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter who Revealed it to the World,” Lesley Blume tells the story of how New Yorker journalist John Hersey cracked the code.On this week’s Kicker, Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, and Blume discuss the problem with coverage that focuses too much on numbers, science, and policy, at a time when Covid deaths in the US continue to surge.

When Trump gave the go-ahead for his mob to storm the Capitol last week, it manifested more as a media event than an organized political coup. As Trump loses power, his followers doubtless will fight harder for relevance and air time.On this week’s Kicker, Davey Alba, a New York Times technology reporter covering online disinformation and its global harms, and Alexander Reid Ross, a doctoral fellow at the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right and an adjunct professor at Portland State University, join Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to discuss what journalists should look for online as Trump leaves office.

Five lost lives by Columbia Journalism Review