Description:

What is the role of evidence and truth-telling in the midst of “fake news,” Twitter and “bots?” What are the difficulties of verifying fact and speaking truth in the Trump era? Jane Mayer and Peter Slevin will discuss the challenges of being a journalist when the media is under attack for bias in these tumultuous times.

Jane Mayer is staff writer for The New Yorker. She authored the book Dark Money about the conservative ascendancy in think tanks, academia, news media, etc. and the use of money to drown out political adversaries in U.S. politics. Peter Slevin spent a decade on the national staff of The Washington Post before moving to Northwestern, where he is on the faculty at the Medill School of Journalism. He teaches courses on political reporting and foreign policy, and next month will be taking graduate students on a reporting trip to Cuba. He has written extensively about Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as political campaigns and policy debates from one end of the country to the other. His portrait of Michelle Obama was a finalist for the PEN America biography prize in 2016.

Co-presented by Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications and Kaplan Humanities Institute.

The 2017-18 TRUTH Dialogues are a year-long conversation about knowledge crises and politics from humanistic perspectives, co-presented by the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities in partnership with multiple Northwestern departments and programs.