Journo – Details, episodes & analysis

“At one point the cabinet secretary pointed out through my window to a block of flats across the water and said, ‘You realise the Chinese will be in there and they’ll have a laser on that tumbler of water, and they’ll have turned it into a microphone. They can listen to what we’re saying now’. So, the curtains came down immediately. At home, I did the same. I unplugged everything. And if I wanted to talk to my wife, we went out into the woods. We did all the things that spies are supposed to do.” 

Alan Rusbridger was the editor of The Guardian newspaper when a whistle blower called Edward Snowden reached out with documents suggesting the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US was spying on its own civilians. The extraordinary claims landed them in hot water with governments in both the US and the UK, and ultimately forced Snowden into exile in Russia where he remains today. 

So, what’s it like when you’re the one responsible for hitting publish on the most explosive story of the decade? One that involves spies and spooks, encrypted messages, and an international hunt for both the source of the story and the journalists who broke it? 

Alan Rusbridger is now the editor of Prospect Magazine, the chair of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and a member of Facebook’s Oversight Board. He’s been at the forefront of journalism’s transition to the digital and social world – all while juggling this century’s most complex stories in news. 

Rusbridger also describes the time he played Chopin in a deserted hotel in Libya while waiting for officials to negotiate the release of a missing Guardian journalist, why he believes Wikileaks founder Julian Assange should be released from prison, and the legacy of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.  

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Journo is a production of Deadset Studios. 

Host: Nick Bryant 

Executive Producer: Rachel Fountain 

Interviewer: Kellie Riordan 

Producer: Liam Riordan 

Sound design: Melissa May 

Managing Editor: Kellie Riordan 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

War. Environmental peril. The never-ending pandemic. No wonder audiences are tired of bad news.

And in worse news for the media, that widespread news fatigue is rapidly becoming active news avoidance.

Constructive journalism offers a solutions-based approach to reporting, which is appealing to audiences. But how do you convince the rest of the newsroom of its value?

Australian ABC journalist Sabra Lane, The New York Times reporter Tina Rosenberg, Flint Beat founder Jiquanda Johnson and UK-based Positive News editor Seán Wood are all pioneering solutions journalism practitioners.

In a world where we just want to hear about something going right, they’re rethinking the age-old adage “if it bleeds, it leads” — and they say it results in more nuanced, engaging reporting.

In this episode of Journo, Nick Bryant finds out whether solutions journalism is really the answer to re-engaging our disillusioned news audiences.

Journo is a production of Deadset Studios. This episode was made with support from the Judith Neilson Institute.

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Host: Nick Bryant
Executive Producer: Rachel Fountain
Producers: Grace Pashley and Britta Jorgensen
Sound Design: Melissa May
Managing Editor: Kellie Riordan
Commissioning Editor: Andrea Ho

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Covering the cut and thrust of politics is one of the most thrilling jobs in journalism.

But why are reporters misreading the mood of our nations?

Brexit. Trump. Australia’s surprising 2019 election outcome — all resulted in plenty of soul-searching from political journalists.

What if it’s more than just faulty polling — what if it’s a basic failure to connect?

Has the excitement of the #spill and race to be first with a scoop seduced political reporters away from the real work of covering issues that matter to their audience?

With Australia about to go to another federal election, host Nick Bryant investigates whether political coverage needs an overhaul.

Grab your press pass: Journo helps you understand how your news is made, disseminated, and consumed.

Journo is a production of Deadset Studios. This episode was made with support from the Judith Neilson Institute.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

He is one of Washington’s most recognisable and influential journalists, who became even more well-known thanks to his facial expressions in that interview with US President Donald Trump in 2020.

But it wasn’t an easy road for political reporter Jonathan Swan.

The Aussie print journalist’s first ever TV interview was also with President Trump — only a couple of years before his Emmy-award winning one. Only that first interview was definitely NOT a critical success!

So how does this Axios journalist view the peaks and troughs of his career?

Swan attributes his success to constantly honing his reporting craft, and working harder than anyone else in one of the toughest rounds in journalism.

But he didn’t just work hard, he worked smarter — eschewing the daily press briefings to work his contacts, which led to him becoming one of the most reliable story-breakers of the Trump presidency.

Host Nick Bryant gets the inside track on the journalism of Jonathan Swan, and what’s behind his rise in Washington.

Grab your press pass: Journo helps you understand how your news is made, disseminated, and consumed. 

Journo is a production of Deadset Studios. This episode was made with support from the Judith Neilson Institute.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“We have to recognise that the truth is often complex. And it's often elusive in some respects. And it's nuanced. That's not an excuse for enabling liars or for being complicit in propaganda campaigns.”

From inside the Washington Post on the day the Drudge Report cracked open the Clinton scandal, through the digital disruption of the past 20 years, double Pulitzer Prize winner and Dean of Columbia Journalism School Steve Coll unpacks how the business of journalism has undergone a transformation over his working life.

He walks us through his years in newsrooms, as a correspondent in South Asia, to leading the team at the Washington Post and Columbia.

He talks partisanship and false equivalence (“both sides journalism”), the dominance of Facebook and Google, and whether the media is responsible for the election of Donald Trump.

Host Nick Bryant asks Steve Coll about his hopes for the latest generation of journalists, the missteps the industry has made in the past, and dissects how the world’s best journalists can continue to report in unstable times.

Steve Coll is a member of JNI’s International Advisory Council.

Journo is a production of Deadset Studios. This episode was made with support from the Judith Neilson Institute.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The daily press conference, Covid case numbers, border closures, reporting from your living room or from the silent streets of a locked down city.

Barring world wars, has any event had a bigger impact on the way journalists do their jobs than this pandemic?

Covid-19 has changed the way we live but also the way we cover news.

For journalists, it’s meant living with the possibility of getting the virus and passing it on to their families.

It has thrown science and health journalism into the spotlight, showing how critical and well-researched that reporting must be when the science itself is changing.

It has challenged political reporters to try and do their jobs while being scrutinised by a tribal and sometimes vitriolic audience.

Host Nick Bryant examines the ways the pandemic has affected journalism.

Journo is a production of Deadset Studios. This episode was made with support from the Judith Neilson Institute.

Grab your press pass as Journo helps you understand how your news is made, disseminated, and consumed. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our outlook and media consumption are increasingly global, but local journalism remains more important than ever — keeping communities connected, saving lives during disasters, and holding power to account in places where few lights shine.

Within weeks of Australia's first COVID lockdown, in April 2020, more than 200 regional newspapers announced they could no longer keep their presses running.

Yet green shoots are sprouting in the news deserts. In some places, local news publishers are growing in ways no one thought possible a few years ago, as audiences crave information and connection in their immediate community.

Host Nick Bryant meets the Troublemaker and the Terrier. One's a former lawyer whose fierce reporting has been stifled by a local council that says she asks too many questions. The other wonders how she'll keep her one-woman operation going in the face of mounting overheads and increased regulation.

Journo is a production of Deadset Studios. This episode was made with support from the Judith Neilson Institute.

Grab your press pass as Journo helps you understand how your news is made, disseminated, and consumed.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“If you're targeted by Pegasus, you see nothing, you smell nothing, you taste nothing. You’re minding your own business, doing whatever it is that you do with your phone. And then it’s infected.”  

It might sound cloak-and-dagger, but cyber security expert John Scott-Railton says spyware poses a very real threat to journalists’ ability to do their jobs. 

The Pegasus Project, an international coalition of journalists, has found around 200 journalists are potential targets for surveillance by the malicious spyware. 

Founding Editor of India’s The Wire Siddharth Varadarajan was among them. He received the disturbing news his phone had been infected, giving remote users access to his every text, call... and contact. 

“As journalists, phones are an extension of our bodies... And what we found is that the sense of intrusion and violation is profound.”  

But does the fear of surveillance have the potential to be as dangerous to a free press as the spyware itself? 

In this episode of Journo, host Nick Bryant investigates the technology being used to monitor and intimidate those holding power to account — and finds a coalition of allies who’ve banded together to resist the digital incursion. 

Journo is a production of Deadset Studios. This episode was made with support from the Judith Neilson Institute.

Grab your press pass: Journo helps you understand how your news is made, disseminated, and consumed. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

China is closing its doors to foreign journalists just as it becomes the most interesting story in the world. 

So, is this all part of a strategy by China to control its own news at home and abroad? 

But with geopolitical tensions rising, China is not a place the world can afford to ignore. 

Nationalistic media reports produced under the watchful eye of the Chinese government are stirring suspicion of foreign media among Chinese people. 

Meanwhile, more than one million Australians identify as part of the Chinese diaspora — and a large proportion rely solely on tightly controlled platforms like WeChat for their news. 

In this episode of Journo, host Nick Bryant investigates how journalists can get accurate information to Australia’s Chinese diaspora, and whether it’s possible for foreign news organisations to get authentic coverage out of China without boots on the ground. 

Journo is a production of Deadset Studios. This episode was made with support from the Judith Neilson Institute.

Grab your press pass: Journo helps you understand how your news is made, disseminated, and consumed. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"You’ve got no one left to tell the story” warns Bilal Sarwary, legendary Afghan journalist, as he flees Kabul following death threats from the Taliban. 

Bilal’s not alone. He’s part of a new generation of journalists who’ve come of age since 9/11 who’ve been forced to abandon their homes and careers reporting on their homeland.   

Those reporters who do remain in Afghanistan face an uncertain future under a regime that once banned television and the internet, and who have maintained an assassination campaign against journalists — particularly women. 

It’s a reality at odds with the reformed, liberal image a slick new Taliban PR machine is constructing. 

International correspondent Jane Ferguson (PBS, The New Yorker) calls the re-brand “a brilliant idea cooked up in Doha by Taliban leaders". But she says implementing a more moderate rule is impossible. 

While the Taliban says women are free to keep learning and working, Moby and Tolo News boss Saad Mohseni faces a world where his reporters are beaten up for doing their jobs. 

In this first episode of Journo, host Nick Bryant investigates the exodus of Afghan media, and the powerful spin from Taliban HQ that helped them claim the country. 

Journo is a production of Deadset Studios. This episode was made with support from the Judith Neilson Institute.

Grab your press pass: Journo helps you understand how your news is made, disseminated, and consumed. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.