Facts Under Fire: Reporting in Impossible Times, The Forum for the Academy and the Public’s 2025 annual conference, will explore the varied ways that journalism and journalists are under fire with autocratic trends threatening democracy and democratic institutions in the United States and around the world.
One focus will be on coverage of the two great global problems of our era: the rise of powerful and potentially dangerous technologies; and the threat of climate change. We’ll look at how and why these topics are reported or not reported. We’ll also discuss how political actors are quashing policy debates and putting forward false narratives. We’ll consider the decline of the newspaper and the media in general, as social media takes hold of the public’s mind and platforms like “X” morph from user-friendly discussion forums into politically charged platforms controlled by billionaires, and filled with bots, trolls, and AI-generated deep fakes. What is real and what is fabricated in stories about wars and elections? How does the blurring of lines between credible and misleading forms of information impact our political discourse, our culture, and the very future of humankind, as we face a variety of unprecedented (and largely underreported) existential threats? The schedule follows.
February 7: Friday Keynote event, 4:30pm to 6:15pm
Welcome: Austen Parrish (Dean of the Law School, UCI)
Event Introduction: Barry Siegel (Professor of Literary Journalism, UCI)
Keynote: Dean Baquet (former executive editor of the New York Times), “Crisis in the Newsroom”
Keynote Response Panel: Amy Wilentz, moderator with panelists Jodie Ginsberg (CEO, Committee to Protect Journalists), Hector Tobar (Professor of Literary Journalism and journalist/novelist, UCI), and Alan Weisman (journalist and author of The World Without Us)
February 8: Saturday events
9:15 to 9:45am
Welcome: Tyrus Miller (Dean of the School of Humanities, UCI)
Opening Remarks: Amy Wilentz (Professor of Literary Journalism, UCI; Co-Director of the Forum)
Conversation: Jeffrey Wasserstrom (Professor of History, UCI; Co-Director of the Forum) with Ivan Ogilvie (photojournalist) on work in Burma
Panel 1: The American Election, 9:45-11:00
Moderator, Allison Perlman (Associate Professor of History, UCI) with panelists Rick Hasen (Professor of Law, UCI), David Kaye (Professor of Law, UCI), Betsy Reed (Editor, Guardian US), and Angilee Shah (CEO and Editor-in-Chief, Charlottesville Tomorrow)
Coffee break: 11:00 to 11:15
Panel 2: Journalists as Targets, 11:15-12:30
Moderator, Betsy Reed (Guardian) with Widlore Mérancourt on Haiti, Polina Ivanova on Russia, Alan Weisman on the United States, and Katie Stallard on China
Lunch: 12:30 to 1:30
Lunchtime conversation, “A Dialogue on War Zones,” with Jodie Ginsberg and Amy Wilentz
Panel 3: Tech Challenges to Truth in the Age of AI and Algorithms, 1:30 to 2:45
Moderator, Paul Dourish (Professor of Informatics and Computer Science); with panelists Olufunmilayo Arewa (George Mason, Law), Sheera Frenkel (New York Times), Lucy Hornby (Senior Associate, Center for Strategic and International Studies), and Elizabeth Loftus (UCI, Criminology, Law and Society, Psychology, and Law)
2:45 to 3: Coffee Break
Panel 4: Climate as a Story or the Story, 3:00 to 4:15
Moderator, Alex Wang (Professor of Law, UCLA), with panelists Doug Kysar (Professor of Law, Yale), Nina Lakhani (Environmental Justice Reporter, Guardian), Cascade Sorte (Associate Professor of Biology, UCI), Alan Weisman
Wrap Up Session, 4:15-5:00
Introduced and moderated by Jeff Wasserstrom, with Kaya Genç (Journalist and novelist, and special correspondent in Istanbul, Los Angeles Review of Books) and Jeffrey Ngo (US-based Hong Kong activist)
To learn more about participants, CLICK HERE.
To learn about the sponsors, CLICK HERE.
Questions? Email SueJeanne Koh at the Humanities Center, sj.koh@uci.edu.
