The Kicker
Politikk og nyheterThe Kicker is a podcast on the media and the world today. It comes out twice a month, hosted by Josh Hersh and produced by Amanda Darrach for the Columbia Journalism Review. It is available wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Siste episoder av The Kicker podcast
- The Kicker Live: Branko Brkic Wants Journalists to Wake Up (00:41:35)
Last year, Branko Brkic, the founder of the Daily Maverick, a South African news outlet, left his day job to launch an advocacy campaign in defense of journalism. Called Project Kontinuum, the organization aims to sound the alarm about the global threats facing the institution of journalism—and to begin to mount a defense. In this conversation, Brkic speaks about the admittedly “bleak” picture that he paints, and why news outlets have to stop playing defense if they want to survive. This podc...
- The Kicker Live: Arwa Damon on Leaving CNN and Telling Stories from Gaza (00:24:59)
For nearly twenty years, Arwa Damon worked as a journalist covering conflict zones across the Middle East—much of it as a prominent correspondent for CNN. But in 2015, amid the unending horrors of the Syrian civil war, Damon had enough. She left the network and founded Inara, a charity that helps provide treatment to children facing some of the most difficult medical conditions. Her new role has allowed her access to people and places she wouldn’t have seen as a journalist, including fo...
- The Kicker Live: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad on American Misadventures in the Middle East (00:43:17)
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is an award-winning Iraqi journalist for The Guardian and the author of A Stranger in Your Own City (2023), a reported memoir of his life as an architect turned journalist during the American war in Iraq. In this wide-ranging conversation, Abdul-Ahad shares his journey to becoming a reporter, what he was surprised to learn about his own country, and how he approaches depicting the intimate lives of the people caught up in war—from innocent bystanders to murderous warlords. T...
- What’s the Point of Investigating Trump? (00:24:15)
David Fahrenthold won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2016 reporting on how Donald Trump’s lifetime of charitable giving was largely a mirage. Nine years later, he’s still reporting on how Trumpworld’s claims about financial matters don’t always add up—this time, looking closely at the cost-cutting from DOGE for the New York Times. But does this kind of facts-first reporting still land? With Trump doing so much grifting and personal enrichment out in the open, Fahrenthold joins The Kicker to...
- ‘I Try to Find the Question That People Cannot Squirm Out Of’: An Interview with Nashville’s Phil Williams (00:30:01)
For more than thirty years, Phil Williams has been the steadying voice of investigative reporting at NewsChannel 5, in Nashville. His deep dives into toxic wastewater and lobbyist access to state politicians have earned him a slew of major journalism awards, including five Peabodys and five duPont-Columbia Awards. But in recent years, his most viral moments have been his unflappable encounters with extremists and neo-Nazis, who have popped up brazenly in communities around Nashville—that is, ...
- ‘The Threat Is Very Real’: NPR’s Katherine Maher on the Fight to Save Public Media (00:32:10)
Last week, Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for the end of funding for NPR and PBS. It’s the latest attempt by conservatives to cut back on support for public media, and in particular target NPR, which they view as having a liberal bias. Katherine Maher, NPR’s CEO, says that perception is deeply unfair—and notes that the vast majority of the funding for public media goes to local stations, which are widely trusted across the political spectrum. But the battle to insulate NPR fro...
- Inside El Salvador’s Dystopian Prison Network (00:29:44)
A few years ago, El Salvador was one of the most violent nations in the world, with gang killings taking the lives of dozens of people every week. Nayib Bukele, elected president in 2019, changed all that—today, violence is way down. But his brute-force approach to the problem has involved mass arrests, secret deals, and forced disappearances into a harsh prison system—which is apparently the envy of many in the Trump administration. Filmmaker Neil Brandvold has covered much of El Salva...
- Kai Ryssdal Was America’s Economic Voice of Reason This Week (00:24:31)
Kai Ryssdal has been the host of Marketplace, a leading daily radio show and podcast about the economy, produced by American Public Media, since 2005. He delivers the news—from the bitter latest on our 401(k)s to unexpected interviews about the modern-day resurgence of train robberies—with an affable, direct tone. And when he has something he wants listeners to know—as he did all this week, while the policies of the Trump administration sent the stock market, and the global economy, int...
- Carlos Watson Goes Free: A Surprising Coda to the CJR Podcast (00:19:55)
Prosecutors weren’t notified in advance, witnesses are in shock—and Watson’s family celebrates his freedom. On the day that Carlos Watson, the founder of the digital media company Ozy Media, was due to turn himself in to prison last week, to begin serving a nearly ten-year sentence for fraud and identity theft, he and his family received some unexpected good news: President Donald Trump was commuting his sentence. Susie Banikarim, who attended nearly every day of the trial last year, and coho...
- Molly White Knows You Don’t Understand Crypto (00:25:04)
If you thought “DOGE” only stood for the “Department of Government Efficiency”—well, you’re not alone. The world of crypto is full of double meanings and inside jokes, making the recent arrival of these alternative currency markets—and their attendant “crypto bros”—into the seat of power in Washington all the more mystifying. Enter Molly White, a longtime crypto researcher (and skeptic) whose work has appeared in the New York Times as well as in her self-published newsletter, Citation Needed....
- The Legal War on Journalism (00:25:04)
Over the past several months, Donald Trump has mounted a series of legal attacks against the media, including a libel case against ABC, an FCC investigation into CBS, and a lawsuit accusing an Iowa pollster (and the newspaper that publishes her) of “election interference.” The sometimes far-fetched claims in these cases notwithstanding, the maneuvers are having an effect. The parent company of ABC settled the libel case, over the objections of many news staffers, and CBS has turned over inter...
- The Kicker, the Masseuses, and the Price of Doing Sports Journalism (00:27:37)
In January, the Baltimore Banner released an investigation into the star kicker of the Baltimore Ravens, in which multiple women accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior during massages, dating back years. (The player denies the accusations.) It was an example of a rare kind of journalism these days: hard-hitting accountability reporting on sports. Over the past several years, numerous investigative sports outlets have folded, replaced largely by soft-focused content produced by players...
- A Warning from a Hungarian Journalist: ‘Brace Yourself for the Worst’ (00:26:41)
András Pethő is a Hungarian journalist and a cofounder of Direkt36, an independent investigative news outlet. Over the past decade, he’s watched as the government of Viktor Orbán—the world leader whom Steve Bannon once praised as “Trump before Trump”—has systematically eroded the freedom of the press in his country, in ways that may feel familiar to Americans watching corporate news leaders succumb to pressure from the administration. Pethő joins The Kicker to explain why he believes journali...
- CJR’s Jon Allsop on the Return of the Trump Whirlwind (00:32:55)
Jon Allsop writes and edits The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter. There, he’s closely watched as the American press has struggled to respond to, and cover, the barrage of news that pours out of Donald Trump. As a frenetic new term begins, Jon joins The Kicker to share his thoughts on what the media gets wrong—and how the political press might begin to chart a new relationship with the presidency and the public. Read More: *Jon’s latest newsletter, on Trump’s first week back in office *Jon’...
- Coda’s Natalia Antelava on Meta, Trump, and How Journalism Can Survive 2025 (00:30:10)
Natalia Antelava spent many years as a correspondent for the BBC, before starting her own media company, Coda Story, in 2016. She’s covered wars in the Middle East and the rise of authoritarianism across Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. For the past year, she was a Knight Fellow at Stanford, where she examined how journalism might survive in an era of AI and tech supremacy. Antelava joins The Kicker to talk about Meta’s decision to do away with fact-checking, preparing for a second Trump admi...
- The Unraveling of Ozy Media: Episode 3: The Verdict and the Pain (01:03:26)
In the finale, Carlos Watson takes the stand—and the jury reaches a verdict.“The Unraveling of Ozy Media” is a special three-part series of The Kicker, on the trial of Carlos Watson and the excesses of the digital media age, presented by the Columbia Journalism Review.Hosted and coproduced by Josh Hersh and Susie BanikarimProduced and edited by Amanda Darrach
- The Unraveling of Ozy Media: Episode 2: Built on a Bluff (00:53:13)
How inflating traffic data went mainstream in digital media—and a key witness takes the stand. “The Unraveling of Ozy Media” is a special three-part series of The Kicker, on the trial of Carlos Watson and the excesses of the digital media age, presented by the Columbia Journalism Review. Hosted and coproduced by Josh Hersh and Susie Banikarim Produced and edited by Amanda Darrach
- The Unraveling of Ozy Media: Episode 1: Truth and Mythmaking (00:42:59)
Carlos Watson’s media startup arrives on the scene—and insiders reveal a dark reality under its glossy veneer.“The Unraveling of Ozy Media” is a special three-part series of The Kicker, on the trial of Carlos Watson and the excesses of the digital media age, presented by the Columbia Journalism Review.Hosted and coproduced by Josh Hersh and Susie BanikarimProduced and edited by Amanda Darrach
- Coming Soon: The Unraveling of Ozy Media (00:02:16)
Starting on December 9, the Columbia Journalism Review presents a special three-part series of The Kicker: “The Unraveling of Ozy Media,” on the dramatic rise and fall of Carlos Watson, the cofounder of the digital media company Ozy. In 2023, Watson was charged with fraud after it was revealed that one of his partners had masqueraded as a YouTube executive, during a call with potential investors. But Ozy’s failure is about more than one man. It’s a story about an era of profligate growt...
- How Trump Won the Latino Vote: A Deep Dive with CJR Contributor Jack Herrera (00:28:29)
Nearly half of all Latino voters put their support behind former president Donald Trump this week, according to exit polls—a 14 percent increase from 2020. Those results surprised many, but not Jack Herrera, who has been reporting on the shifting voting habits of Latino communities across the country for years. Herrera joins The Kicker to talk about what he’s learned from his journalism in Pennsylvania, Iowa, and the border counties of Texas. Read More: Herrera’s article for CJR’s Ele...
- Martin Baron on Jeff Bezos, the Post, and the role of presidential endorsements (00:24:22)
Martin Baron was the executive editor of the Washington Post from 2013 until his retirement, in 2021—which meant he was there for the arrival of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as owner and publisher of the paper. He’s long praised Bezos for taking a firm line against any interference with the paper’s journalism, but Bezos’s sudden decision, announced last week, to torpedo the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris was a bridge too far. In a post on X, Baron described the move as an act of “c...
- How Trump’s team could craft ‘the narrative’ after the election: NBC’s Ryan Reilly on 2020, and the road ahead (00:33:21)
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 a...
- Hell Gate's Chris Robbins on a manic news cycle in New York (00:26:16)
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 ongo...
- The power of uncomfortable ideas: Jina Moore Ngarambe on her time at Guernica (00:39:19)
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 wo...
- ‘That’s how you run a debate!’: 9News’s Kyle Clark on holding politicians accountable (00:28:25)
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 t...