Best Shorenstein Center Media Podcasts (2025)

1
What is the role of US Inspectors General? With Michael Missal 12:15

5d ago12:15

12:15

What do Inspectors General actually do, and why has their role become a battleground in recent years? On this episode of Unlocked, Michael Missal—former Inspector General of the US Department of Veterans Affairs—joins host Nancy Gibbs to break down the vital work of IGs in safeguarding federal agencies from waste, fraud, and abuse. Together, they e…

1
How Media Makes Money Today (It's Not Easy) with CEO of The Meteor Cindi Leive 43:24

10d ago43:24

43:24

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation, and the media. I’m Eric Schurenberg, longtime journalist and founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. We talk a lot about the economic challenges, not to say cataclysm, that news media has been through in recent decades. Even the most storied brands have found themselves striking ad…

1
What Are You Really Seeking When You Click On News? University of Delaware's Prof Dannagal Young 36:39

1M ago36:39

36:39

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media with Eric Schurenberg, a longtime journalist, now executive director of the Alliance for Trust in Media. Have you ever thought about what you are really doing when you scroll for news, or click on a headline that pops up in your feed? The quick answer is, “I want to know w…

1
First Aid for the Local News Emergency with Local News Accelerator Mackenzie Warren (Northwestern University) 42:09

2M ago42:09

42:09

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media. I’m your host Eric Schurenberg, long time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media The news business has been in freefall, as every listener to In Reality is aware. The plunge has been steepest in local journalism. We lose two loc…

1
If News Is So Important, Why Can't It Make Money? with Historic Media Executive Norman Pearlstine 35:51

2M ago35:51

35:51

Americans have long had a conflicted attitude about political news. On the one hand, most Americans, Republicans and Democrats, see the press as an essential watchdog on government. This is not a new idea: The founders of the country singled out the press for protection from government interference for just that reason. At the same time, sizable ma…

1
The Rise of the Personal Media Brand with Eric Newcomer Founder of the Newcomer Media Outlet 28:20

2M ago28:20

28:20

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media hosted by Eric Schurenberg, a long-time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. Among the many forces unravelling institutional media is the relatively recent ability of journalists to become mini-institutions on their own, thank…

1
What Makes Government Inefficient? With Mina Hsiang 35:03

2M ago35:03

35:03

Mina Hsiang served as the Administrator of the United States Digital Service from 2021 until January 2025. She joined Nancy Gibbs to talk about what the USDS did to build both government services and efficiency, as well as a broader conversation about the role of government in society, the hurdles to making government more efficienet, and some of t…

1
Introducing Unlocked 1:15

2M ago1:15

1:15

Welcome to Unlocked, an explanatory podcast to help people reporting on the news decipher how the U.S. government works, and what exactly is going on today. Hosted by Nancy Gibbs, from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.By Nancy Gibbs, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy

1
In Democracy, You Can’t Avoid Conflicts. You Have To Just Do Them Better, with Human-Compatible AI Expert Jonathan Stray 37:37

3M ago37:37

37:37

In this conversation, Jonathan Stray, Senior Scientist at the UC Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible AI, explains to Eric Schurenberg the intersection of AI, media, and conflict, emphasizing the challenges of objectivity in journalism and the need for a new approach to reporting that embraces complexity and 'multipartiality'. He explores the role …

1
One Man’s Plan To Rebuild Atlanta’s Hometown Newsroom: The AJC’s President Andrew Morse 34:44

3M ago34:44

34:44

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about Truth, Disinformation, and the Media hosted by Eric Schurenberg, a long-time journalist and media exec, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. Media overall is in dire straits financially, as In Reality listeners are well aware. Local journalism has been the hardest hit: We’ve lost a third of th…

1
How To Talk With (& Listen To) The Other Side with 'The Fearless Conversationalist' Mónica Guzmán 40:17

4M ago40:17

40:17

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about Truth, Disinformation and the Media with Eric Schurenberg, a long-time journalist and media exec, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. In Reality is dedicated to the proposition that there is such a thing as objective truth and that the pursuit of it is a noble effort, one that over the centur…

1
The Other AI Arms Race: "Defender" AI vs Deepfakes - Reality Defender CEO Ben Colman 27:00

4M ago27:00

27:00

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about Truth, Disinformation, and the Media. I'm Eric Schurenberg, a long-time journalist and media exec, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. Just when you thought it could not get harder to recognize truth in your newsfeed, along comes artificial intelligence. Now it’s child’s play for bad actors t…

1
Why Influencers Have Trust and Journalists Don’t with 'The Future of Trustworthy Information' Author Julia Angwin 41:53

5M ago41:53

41:53

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth and the media with Eric Schurenberg, a long-time journalist and media exec, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. It’s not exactly news that the traditional news business is in decline. Most distressing to those of us who grew up in the profession: that audience levels of trust in the wor…

1
Is Truth Dead? With Co-Founder of NewsGuard Steven Brill 54:45

5M ago54:45

54:45

Welcome to in Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media. I’m your host Eric Schurenberg, a long-time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. On previous episodes, we discussed how you can distinguish between reliable news online and unreliable, story by story. An obvious shortcut is s…

1
How To Judge The Truth of Any Claim in 30 Seconds with Top Critical Thinking Expert Mike Caulfield 55:19

6M ago55:19

55:19

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media with your host Eric Schurenberg, a long time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. On In Reality, we talk a lot about the supply side of the information ecosystem, about journalism and social media and how disinformation gets s…

1
Battered But Still Hopeful, The Guardians of a Civil Internet with Integrity Institute's Jeff Allen 44:35

6M ago44:35

44:35

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast on truth, disinformation and the media. I’m your host Eric Schurenberg, a former journalist and media exec, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. At the front lines of the battle for truth in the information ecosystem are the social media platforms’ trust and safety teams. Trust and safety teams are …

1
One Way To Win An Information War with The Autocracy Expert Peter Pomerantsev 51:37

7M ago51:37

51:37

In our free-for-all information ecosystem, the liars have the inside track. It’s much easier to make up outrageous claims about, say, migrants than it is to send reporters into the field and check facts. The more outrage a bogus claim generates and the more often it’s repeated, the more widely it spreads. That’s human nature. So it’s encouraging to…

1
How To Stop Worrying and Love Media Bias with AllSides Co-founder John Gable 37:00

7M ago37:00

37:00

People say they long for that misty past when the news was just the facts, but that never was, of course. Newsrooms are human organizations and journalists are people and however they may strive for objectivity, they come with biases shaped by newsroom culture newsroom and audience expectations. The smart game isn’t to avoid all bias; it’s to recog…

1
In A Less Misinformed World, Would Harris Have Won? With Top Journalists Paul Farhi, Nayeema Raza, and Isaac Saul 55:04

7M ago55:04

55:04

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media, with Eric Schurenberg - the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. This week… Everyone with a keyboard and Internet access has weighed in with their opinion about why the Trump campaign won and Harris’s lost. That’s fine. But here at In Reality, we’re not so interest…

1
The Most Dishonest Campaign Ever? with Politifact's Katie Sanders 36:00

8M ago36:00

36:00

The US election, which takes place the day after this episode releases, has been the most fact-challenged election in recent memory. Compared to, say, four years ago, truth is very much on the run. Social media platforms, most people’s source of information, have pulled back on flagging falsehoods. In the case of X, the platform’s owner actively so…

1
X, Lies, and Video Fakes in the 2024 Election with Nina Jankowicz and Yoel Roth 40:46

8M ago40:46

40:46

We’ve seen social media disrupt elections before, but this time feels louder, angrier. Maybe it’s the retreat of content moderators, maybe the metamorphosis of Twitter into X, and maybe the growing sophistication of adversaries from Russia, China and Iran. Today, we are lucky to have two key veterans of the social media battlescape join us on In Re…

1
What The Polls Are Really Telling You with Pew Research Center's Jocelyn Kiley 27:43

8M ago27:43

27:43

At this moment, weeks shy of the 2024 election, the polls are showing that the race between Trump and Harris is neck and neck. It’s tight nationally. It’s tight in all the swing states. If you think you know who’s going to win, you’re going on gut, not numbers. So what good are polls this year? In Eric's class at the University of Chicago, he put t…

1
Media Bias: Left and Right with CNN's Brian Stelter and The Dispatch's Jonah Goldberg 37:12

9M ago37:12

37:12

It has become general wisdom in these polarized times that all the news you consume is slanted one way or another. The New York Times is not all the news that’s fit to print and Fox News not fair and balanced, to quote mottoes those newsrooms used to use. Now, most would agree that the Times reports through a left-leaning lens, and Fox frankly call…

1
How Free Societies Decide What's Real with Brookings Institution's Jonathan Rauch 50:26

9M ago50:26

50:26

The goal of modern disinformation campaigns is not necessarily to turn audiences into true believers but rather to turn them into cynics, to persuade them that you can’t trust anything said by any institution, whether media or science or government. In this world view, there is no such thing as objective truth, everyone is biased or otherwise untru…

1
The Original Fact Checker: How To Know What's True with The Post's Glenn Kessler (Election Repost) 39:46

10M ago39:46

39:46

In Reality is taking a summer break, so this is an episode we’ve posted before, but I thought that in the middle of a US Presidential campaign, it might be a good idea to review my conversation with Glenn Kessler, editor of the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column and arguably the creator of the fact checking industry. In the Post, Glenn and his t…

1
Is The Rise of MAGA a Failure of Journalism? The University of Texas at Austin's Tom Johnson 36:13

10M ago36:13

36:13

People have a lot of complaints about media in these polarized times. Take your pick: The mainstream press is biased, elitist, sensationalistic, hyper-partisan. If you’re on the right, you may believe that it deliberately enables falsehood. Today’s guest is very much NOT on the right, but he agrees. Tom Johnson is a professor at the University of T…

1
How To Immunize Your Mind Against False Beliefs with Carnegie Mellon University's Andy Norman 39:43

11M ago39:43

39:43

Today's guest is Andy Norman, philosophy professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the author of a fascinating book, Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind Parasites and the Search for a Better way to Think. Andy argues that it’s possible to immunize the mind against harmful beliefs, just as it’s possible to immunize the body against germs. He a…

1
Want to Understand Today’s Political Debate? Study PsyOps: Sci-fi Author & Science Journalist Annalee Newitzs 41:13

11M ago41:13

41:13

Find this week's episode description below... Join Eric's 'Truth, Disinformation & The 2024 Election' Class at The University of Chicago It’s open to everyone via Zoom. It will discuss what’s going on in the coverage of the election, with a wonderful collection of guest speakers, educators, prominent political reporters and polling experts. It will…

1
Using the Tools of Tech to Hold Big Tech Accountable with Pulitzer-Winner & Proof News Founder Julia Angwin 40:11

12M ago40:11

40:11

Misinformation, rumor, psy-ops and propaganda--whatever you want to call the four horsemen of today’s media apocalypse—have been with us as long as the media itself. But you have to admit that the arrival of digital technology, led by social media, has given all of those forces outsized power. We still haven’t quite come to terms with how tech has …

1
The Original Fact Checker: How To Know What's True with The Post's Glenn Kessler 40:05

1y ago40:05

40:05

Finding your way to the truth is the informal job of the 21st-century citizen. All of us. Unless you want to be manipulated, you need some check on the claims you hear uttered by powerful people or repeated, innocently or not, by others. For a few thousand people in this era, correcting the record is a profession, even a calling, and today’s guest …

1
The Lost Art of Civil Discourse with Clea Conner CEO of Open to Debate 45:51

1y ago45:51

45:51

Any institution that aspires to get at the truth needs a process for testing what it believes to be true. Central to the judicial system, for example, are lawyers challenging their opponents’ arguments. In science, claims must be peer-reviewed, and experiments have to be replicated. But in politics and culture, any kind of rule-based, civil testing…

1
The Logic Behind Illogical Ideologies: Pepperdine University's Jason Blakely 31:49

1y ago31:49

31:49

The political landscape in the US has fragmented into a handful of beliefs, the adherents to which have less and less in common, other than a profound inability to comprehend others’ beliefs. This, unfortunately, is not news. In a fascinating new book, today’s guest attempts to pierce the incomprehensibility cloak. The guest is Jason Blakely, an as…

1
Destroying The Internet In Order To Save It: Project Liberty's Frank McCourt 31:07

1y ago31:07

31:07

The guests who come on In Reality come prepared to talk about big issues. Truth, polarization, the information ecosystem: these are not exactly niche issues. Today’s guest though, may have the biggest embrace of anyone I’ve had on the show... You may know Frank McCourt as the billionaire real estate magnate and owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers base…

1
How Newsrooms Decide What's True: Former Editor of the Washington Post Martin Baron 49:11

1y ago49:11

49:11

To figure out what’s true and what’s not in today’s chaotic, fragmented, contradictory information environment, all of us news consumers have to think like journalists: is that story I’m seeing backed by evidence, is the headline fair, is the coverage biased? Well, we could do worse than to think like the journalist who is today’s guest. Until his …

1
The Saboteurs Within: University of Michigan's Barbara McQuade 47:15

1y ago47:15

47:15

For decades, America’s foreign adversaries have used disinformation to undermine American democracy, to sow division and create confusion about what is even true. But who needs foreign adversaries when so many Americans, for whatever reason, have embraced the same tactics and same apparent goal? Today’s guest, Barbara McQuade, is a professor at Uni…

1
Why We're Losing the Misinformation War: The Information Futures Lab's Claire Wardle 37:39

1+ y ago37:39

37:39

It was eight years ago, when Brexit and the US Presidential election showed how misinformation enables real-world damage. Since then, researchers, content managers, regulators, journalists and others sprang into action to counter misinformation and now misinformation pollutions is even worse. Why? Claire Wardle has some ideas. She’s been in the fig…

1
Stopping Misinformation At The Gate: News Literacy Project's Peter Adams 39:36

1+ y ago39:36

39:36

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media with Eric Schurenberg, a long time journalist and media executive, now the founder of the Alliance for Trust in Media. There are two ways to fight misinformation: One is to debunk falsehoods after they have surfaced. The other is to help create media literate news audience…

1
Is News Negativity Driving Audiences Away? The Solutions Journalism Network's David Bornstein 49:54

1+ y ago49:54

49:54

Journalism’s problems today are legion: Collapsing business models, attacks from political partisans, divisions in the profession over basic questions like objectivity. But none of these is solvable until newsrooms address their troubled relationship with audiences: Too many people don’t believe journalists work in their interest. Many avoid news b…

1
Who Killed Trust? And What Can We Do About It? The Center for Media Engagement at UT Austin's Talia Stroud 39:27

1+ y ago39:27

39:27

A lot of people, Eric included, are working to figure out what exactly happened to facts, trust in institutions like science and the news, and to the shared reality we used to enjoy in this country. There is no shortage of research about the depth of the problem but very little about what really might reverse it. Which is where today’s guest comes …

1
Digital Disruption and the Myth of Mainstream Media: CEO of Fortune Media Alan Murray 59:04

1+ y ago59:04

59:04

In talking about the news today, it’s tempting to focus on the bad actors, the amplifiers of nonsense and the peddlers of outrage. It’s worth remembering, though, they’re not the only players. There are journalists who adhere to standards and have managed to thrive despite the seismic disruption of the industry. Today’s guest is one of those. Alan …

1
Can You Make A Profit Fighting Misinfo? NewsGuard's Gordon Crovitz 44:50

1+ y ago44:50

44:50

Disinformation is good business. Spreading lies and outrage tends to be profitable, thanks to programmatic advertising, which cares only about traffic, not truth, and funding by state actors like Russia, which pour money into narratives that undermine democracies. Supporting truth is a tougher commercial prospect, but today’s guest is giving it a c…

1
Polarization's Ground Zero: Author of 'Network of Lies' Brian Stelter 44:18

1+ y ago44:18

44:18

According to a Pew Research survey in 2021, almost three quarters of Americans consider Fox News to be part of the mainstream media, along with familiar brands like ABC News and the Wall Street Journal. That’s interesting because Fox is different in many ways. It’s not only easily the most profitable cable news network and the only one trusted by m…

1
How To Know If You Can Trust That Story: The Trust Project's Sally Lehrman 47:20

1+ y ago47:20

47:20

The information environment today has two broad problems: a supply side problem and a demand side problem. On the supply side, it is ridiculously easy for anyone to spread propaganda or outrage or lies online, and on the demand side, it is hard for audiences to distinguish manipulation from fact-based news. Today’s guest, Sally Lehrman, aims to tac…

1
How Fake History Ignites the Fake Present: Britain's Author of 'Fake History' and 'Fake Heroes' Otto English 35:29

1+ y ago35:29

35:29

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media. I’m Eric Schurenberg, a long time journalist and media executive, now the executive director of the Alliance for Trust in Media. An awful lot of the heat in today’s polarized political landscape arises from vastly different interpretations of history. In the US, we fight …

1
Why Don't The Advocates of Truth Work Together? 42:53

1+ y ago42:53

42:53

A lot of academic researchers, journalists, NGOs, even a few tech firms--are working on the issue of disinformation. Some people are opposed to this work, especially on the political right, and have given this disparate group the ominous collective nickname of disinformation industrial complex, as if it were a monolith devoted single-mindedly to ce…

1
How To Make Advertising An Ally For Truth 47:34

1+ y ago47:34

47:34

One reason that falsehoods flourish online is that major advertisers fund them—but usually unwittingly. The opaque nature of automated online ad delivery means that advertisers don’t actually know where most of their digital ads appear. On a high-quality news site? Maybe. On a trashy clickbait farm? The ad-tech doesn’t care. Today’s In Reality gues…

1
Tech Led Us Into The Misinfo Mess. Can It Lead Us Out? 34:22

1+ y ago34:22

34:22

You can blame today’s chaotic information environment on many factors: digital inequality and the rise of populism, attention hijacking by social media, and the collapse of mainstream media business models. Wherever you point the finger, digital technology was either the root cause or an accelerant. Which is why today’s guest is particularly worth …

1
What We Really Look For When We Say We're Looking For Truth 42:42

2y ago42:42

42:42

Welcome to In Reality, the podcast about truth, disinformation and the media. I’m Eric Schurenberg, a longtime journalist, now executive director of the Alliance for Trust in Media. One of my long-held assumptions is that everyone seeks the truth. They may be derailed in that quest by false information, but the ultimate goal is factuality. Today’s …

1
Atlantic CEO Nick Thompson: What To Believe (or not) in the News 49:20

2y ago49:20

49:20

When I talk to people about the mission of In Reality, I frequently am told, “Media is so corrupt. Why do you bother.” In some circles, it seems that hating professional media is just a reflex, like saying “Bless you” when someone sneezes. Nothing personal. Today’s guest is one of the best living rebuttals I can think of to this kind of blanket con…

1
How to Get People to Believe in Science Again 36:44

2y ago36:44

36:44

In politics, you can understand why some voters align themselves with claims that don’t bear up under scrutiny. In politics, there are other forces at work than factuality, like tribal identity and moral narratives. But science is different—or ought to be. And yet trust in science has stumbled, along with media and government. So… why? And what’s t…

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Shorenstein Center Media Podcasts

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