“Our problem is not simply that the public does not trust us, it’s that they do trust other dishonest brokers. We are not just witnessing a crisis of credibility, we are experiencing a crisis of credulity as well,” said Dr Jelani Cobb, Dean of the Columbia Journalism School in this year’s Reuters Memorial Lecture. His lecture reflected on the factors affecting these crises, from news organisations’ capitulation to pressures from Donald Trump’s administration, to the existential challenges faced by the most trusted publications: local newspapers.
Following the lecture, Cobb joined a panel chaired by our Acting Director, Mitali Mukherjee, to discuss this topic further. Also on the panel were Stephen Ansolabehere, the Frank G. Thompson Professor of Government at Harvard University, and Ritu Kapur, co-founder and managing director of Indian digital outlet The Quint.