Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest today is one of the most durable and successful American journalists of his generation,

with a string of Pulitzer Prizes to prove it.

Marty Barron began his newspaper career in Florida.

He wrote for and edited a string of the country's proudest titles, the Miami Herald,

the LA Times, the Boston Globe, before an eight-year stint as editor of the Washington Post,

a tenure which coincided with the takeover of the Post by the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos,

and then the political rise of Donald Trump,

who declared war on what he called the fake news media and the Post in particular.

Marty Barron is now retired from the political maelstrom of Washington. Donald Trump is not.

Indeed, Trump's remarkable comeback victory in November's election is being seen as a

symbol of a profound shift in America's information landscape, confirmation of the decline of old media

hierarchies and the increasing supremacy of social media, of influences, of a media ecosystem dominated by opinion-driven echo chambers.

This isn't just an American phenomenon. The shift is global. Who benefits from this new era of media

fragmentation where facts are contested, truth is subjective, and disinformation thrives.

Well, Marty Barron joins me now on the line from Massachusetts.

Welcome to Hard Talk.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

It's a great pleasure to talk to you, Marty.

You were editing the Washington Post through the political rise of Donald Trump

and Donald Trump's first presidency. You reflected, after all of that experience, that you felt

the American media had a lot to learn from the failings it displayed in covering the rise of Trump.

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