The Kicker

Martin Baron, the former executive editor of the Washington Post, breaks down the recent decision by Jeff Bezos to cancel the paper's presidential endorsement, labeling it an act of 'cowardice.' Baron discusses the erosion of media credibility amidst shifting political dynamics and critiques Bezos' stance on endorsements. He also delves into the blurred lines between journalism and opinion, emphasizing the crucial need for independent journalism in today’s polarized world. His insights shed light on the importance of accountability in media.

The so-called Big Lie—that the 2020 election was stolen out from under Donald Trump—was more than just a series of individual false facts and misleading videos. It was a narrative, carefully constructed by people affiliated with the Trump campaign, and disseminated through friendly news outlets and social media channels.Four years later, that story still convinces millions of Trump’s supporters. And as NBC’s Ryan Reilly has reported, it’s one that many people on the former president’s team are already laying the groundwork to repeat this time.Reilly joins The Kicker to discuss how those stories spread, and why many in the media are better prepared to combat them—while others, including some prominent social media platforms, are poised to make things worse.Read more:Ryan’s NBC News article on the 2020 effort to “stop the vote” in DetroitRyan’s book Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice SystemNew York Magazine on the DC jail block run by convicted January 6 riotersPolitico on how Trump might try to claim victory no matter whatHosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda DarrachEpisode website

New York City is the media capital of the world, but the number of people and outlets covering the city locally has taken a hit recently. Over the past few years, the Wall Street Journal dropped its independent metro section, the New York Times announced it would stop endorsing local races, and the all-news radio station WCBS went off the air. But a number of scrappy upstarts have started filling the void. The City, a digital news nonprofit, has led some of the best coverage of the ongoing scandals in the administration of Mayor Eric Adams. And Hell Gate, a year-old digital publication, is providing a fresh, voicey take on news and culture.Today’s guest is Christopher Robbins, an editor and cofounder of Hell Gate, on the state of news in New York, the latest (at least as of our conversation) fallout from the Adams administration, and how he hopes to keep Hell Gate around for a while.Read more:The Eric Adams Table of SuccessHosted by Josh HershProduced by Emily Russell

In March, the digital literary magazine Guernica published a personal essay by a British Israeli writer and translator, about her experiences in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas terror attacks.It was raw and honest and painful to read. The writer, Joanna Chen, had spent years before the attacks and subsequent war on Gaza volunteering for an organization that transported Palestinian children into Israeli territory for medical care; after October 7, she found it hard to connect with the work.After the piece was initially published, in March, a number of Guernica staffers—all of them volunteers—expressed outrage that the magazine had published an essay centered on the internal moral agonies of an Israeli, at a time when Palestinians were being brutally killed.The publisher of Guernica pulled the essay; within a month, Jina Moore Ngarambe, the editor in chief, resigned.Today on The Kicker: a conversation with Jina about what she learned from the experience, and why she believes so strongly in journalism’s responsibility to present uncomfortable perspectives.Read more:Joanna Chen’s essay, “From the edges of a broken world” (as republished by Washington Monthly)Guernica founder Michael Archer’s explanation for why the essay was taken downJina’s interview with SemaforHosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda DarrachAudio Mix by William FlynnEpisode website

In late May, Kyle Clark went viral after he moderated a debate featuring six Republican candidates for Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District, including Rep. Lauren Boebert.He refused to allow the candidates to evade his direct questions with waffling, rambly answers, instead repeatedly cutting them off: “You didn’t make any attempt to answer the actual question,” he said at one point.Over the next few weeks, his management of the debate was hailed by everyone from the Poynter Institute to Jimmy Kimmel, who told his national audience, “That’s how you run a debate, right there, like a drill sergeant!”A few months on, Clark has mixed feelings about all the social media fanfare—but he’s happy that his no-nonsense approach to interviewing politicians has caught on.He joins The Kicker ahead of the upcoming presidential debate, between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, to talk about the importance of the media calling out falsehoods, and why local news is central to restoring public trust in the media.Watch the full 9News debate, from May, here.Hosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda DarrachResearch by Kevin LindEpisode Website

In early 2023, Patrick Lohmann, a reporter for the nonprofit Source NM, moved to the small town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, to learn how residents were coping with the aftermath of the largest wildfire in state history.What he learned there was that the destruction brought on by wildfires doesn’t end when the fire itself goes out. It can take years for people to extract benefits from the federal bureaucracy, and for communities to fully recover—if they ever do. Wildfires leave behind debris that can be swept up in devastating flash floods, and in many parts of the country, the “fire season” encompasses most of the year.Pat spoke to The Kicker about the new reality of wildfires, and why all reporters living in fire-prone areas may eventually find themselves covering wildfires.Read more of Patrick Lohmann’s reporting at Source NMPatrick moved to Las Vegas, New Mexico to cover the aftermath of the Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon FireHow wildfires led to flash flooding in Ruidoso (NYT)Hosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda DarrachResearch by Kevin LindEpisode Website

The Democrats are gathering in Chicago next week, and the sitting president has dropped out of the race. But as the guests on today’s podcast remind us, that doesn’t mean history is repeating itself.In 1968, Ted Koppel was just back from a tour covering the war in Vietnam, and assigned to the comparatively tame—if, as he reminds us, not without its moments—presidential campaign of Republican Richard Nixon.Over on the Democratic side, as historian Heather Hendershot writes in her recent book, When the News Broke: 1968 and the Polarizing of America, the media were about to get a rough introduction to how much audience appetites for news were shifting.For more reminiscences on the politics of ‘68—and its present-day lessons for the news media—in CJR’s special report, reported by Kevin Lind.Hosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda DarrachResearch by Kevin LindEpisode Website

Eugene Daniels is a White House reporter for Politico, with a special focus on Kamala Harris. That’s put him front and center for a month of news that few people in politics saw coming.On this episode of The Kicker, Daniels shares what he’s learned from nearly four years of covering the vice president, how her relationship with the press will differ from the president’s, and why you can’t blame the media for Biden’s decision to drop out of the race.Produced by Emily RussellHosted by Josh Hersh

Lorena Lopez came to the United States from her home country of Nicaragua, where she was an investigative reporter, in 1992. But it wasn’t until 2016 that she managed to return to her passion, as the founding editor of La Prensa, a Spanish-language newspaper serving Western Iowa.On this week’s Kicker, Lopez talks about her long journey back to journalism, why reliable, trusted information available for Spanish-speaking Americans is so hard to come by—and why so many of her readers are leaning towards voting for Donald Trump.You can read more about Lopez’s work in Jack Herrera’s profile, which was part of CJR’s Election Issue. (A Spanish-language version of the article is available here.)Hosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda DarrachResearch by Kevin LindEpisode Website

Alex Thompson, a national political correspondent for Axios, first reported that President Biden had started wearing special sneakers, in part to reduce the risk of tripping, last fall.But until the debate last week, he was still one of a small handful of reporters who was aggressively pursuing direct evidence that Biden’s age – regular fodder for political talk shows – was actually having an impact.He joins the Kicker to talk about what it’s like to do that kind of journalism, how the White House pushed back, and why so many people had a hard time accepting what was happening in front of their eyes.Read Alex’s report from last fall about concerns inside the White House about Biden losing his footing.And his coverage after the debate, when he revealed why the White House limited Biden’s public engagements before 10am and after 4pm.The Wall Street Journal’s months-long investigation into signs of Biden’s mental decline, from early June, is here.Hosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda DarrachResearch by Kevin LindEpisode Website