Description: Kurt Andersen discusses the future of journalism. He hopes that news organizations are able to find a way to maintain their traditions of integrity and independence while adapting to the new media environment.

Transcript:

Well journalism faces a lot of challenges. I’m not sure that what are seen each day as the great challenges . . . the death of the newspaper, for instance, or it’s being supplanted by online media
. . . is the greatest challenge. I think . . . I think that trying to . . . that . . . that . . . there . . . there being a . . . a . . . a set of facts that we can all agree on is the great challenge of journalism, at least in the near median term – that journalism doesn’t entirely evolve to the left-wing version of facts, or the right-wing version of facts or the, you know, the Islamic version of facts, and the western version of facts. I mean there will always be the left, the right, the different cultures, different sensibilities who have their own little silo . . . journalistic silos of their version of the truth. And while we can never get back – I’m not sure we went to get back – to the pre-Internet, pre cable table version where there were three networks and New York Times, and they told us the truth from on high, I do think, and I do hope that we can maintain some . . . a shared sense of . . . of “here are the facts” and we here in some little place are engaged in a good faith search for the truth. You know the . . . the . . . “the truth” as a thing has . . . has . . . has gotten a kind of bad reputation from various sides by virtue of various critiques over the last 30 years. But I still . . . I still think that that is what needs to power and drive journalists. And . . . and I hope that the institutions that allowed that to happen in a robust way will figure out a way to maintain themselves, whether . . . by whatever economic model.

Recorded on: 7/5/2007 at The Aspen Ideas Festival