Media’s Biggest Failures
The Intercept Briefing
The Intercept
4.8 • 6.3K Ratings
🗓️ 3 January 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Few journalists have ventured as deep into the shadows of American power as The Intercept's James Risen. A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Risen waged a remarkable seven-year battle against the federal government to protect his sources, risking imprisonment to defend press freedom.
As he prepares to retire from journalism, he joins this week's Intercept Briefing to reflect on his extraordinary career with longtime friend and colleague David Bralow, The Intercept’s general counsel.
Recently, Risen has written extensively on Donald Trump and the dangers he poses to American democracy and is working on a new book about Christian nationalism and extremism. He warns about what lays ahead: “Trump has appointed a bunch of lunatics and conspiracy theorists to positions of power and he's turned the government over to oligarchs, so I think it's gonna get bad really, really fast.”
And Risen foresees that reporters and news organizations are at even more peril than in the past because of changing public attitudes and the legal approach embraced by those in power. “The wealthy can now use libel law against the press endlessly, not to try to win cases, but just to financially exhaust news organizations,” he says. “In most libel cases brought against news organizations, the other side almost never really cares about winning. What they want to do is impose large costs on news organizations to defend against frivolous libel suits.”
To hear more of the conversation, check out this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I'm David Braylo, the Intercept's General Counsel, and your host this week. |
| 0:09.9 | Being a podcast host isn't really part of my usual duties, but I'm stepping forward this week to interview my friend and colleague, Jim Risen, who's retiring from The Intercept. |
| 0:21.0 | But he's not going away. |
| 0:22.5 | He has some really interesting projects on the way, |
| 0:24.6 | and maybe he'll tell us the plans for the future. |
| 0:27.5 | Jim has investigated some of the most complex and sensitive stories in national security. |
| 0:33.1 | What we know about the Bush administration's interception of email, |
| 0:37.2 | telephone, and financial |
| 0:38.8 | transactions after 9-11 can, in part, be attributed to his incredible reporting. |
| 0:44.2 | Let's turn to New York Times investigative reporter James Reisen. |
| 0:47.0 | He and a colleague at the Times when the 2006 pulled surprise for their disclosure of the |
| 0:51.0 | Bush administration program of warrantless wiretapping. |
| 0:54.0 | His story would have come out right before the 2004 presidential election of President Bush over John Kerry. |
| 1:01.0 | It might have changed the outcome of that election. |
| 1:04.0 | But under government pressure, the New York Times refused to publish the story for more than a year. |
| 1:09.0 | A Pulitzer Prize winner, he's built a career uncovering stories that officials would prefer to stay hidden. |
| 1:16.6 | From intelligence operations to the aftermath of 9-11, he has reported on stories that have reshaped |
| 1:22.6 | our understanding of American foreign policy and government secrecy. He's also been at the center of important |
| 1:29.6 | press freedom debates, facing legal challenges that went all the way to the Supreme Court. And I'm |
| 1:35.5 | proud to call him, my friend. He and I started the Press Freedom Defense Fund to support journalists |
| 1:41.0 | and whistleblowers. And today, we dive into his remarkable career, |
| 1:46.5 | his expertise on, and his insights into journalism in an era of increasing in tax. Jim, |
... |
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