Journalism

Laura Poitras on Julian Assange: ‘Admirable, Brilliant, and Flawed’

JWIn Citizenfour, you quote from your production diaries, “I thought I could ignore the contradictions. I was wrong. They are becoming the story.” How did you decide to do it that way?
Laura Poitras:
I wanted to present a narrative that had complexity and contradictions, and tell the audience about some of the contradictions I was feeling when I was filming: What’s the story about? What am I filming? What’s going on?
continued HERE

 Tom Frank: On the Road in Trump Country

How Trump won, and why Clinton lost: a Q&SA with Tom Frank, who has been touring red states to talk about the new paperback edition of his book Listen, Liberal, or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? 
Two highlights: people hated Hillary Clinton — and they liked Bernie.
Continued HERE

 Chris Hayes: Americans Hated Trump’s Health-Care Plan—Will They Go For Single Payer? TheNation.com

JW: A week after repeal-and-replace failed in the House, we’re trying to assess the damage to Trump and the opportunities for progressives. Seems to me this is a disaster for Trump, and a disaster for the Republican Party. Is it possible this is wrong?

Chris Hayes: No. I don’t think you’re wrong. What an unbelievable failure. I have never, in my political reporting career, seen something crash and burn quite like this. Sixty times they voted for repeal, while Obama was president, and now you cannot get a vote for this piece of, frankly, garbage legislation that no one liked—no one across the ideological spectrum.
…continued HERE

Is Trump Like Nixon? Rick Perlstein Q&A 3/29

If you Google the question “Is Trump Like Nixon,” you get something like four million reults, mostly answering ‘yes.’
But we weren’t so sure about that, so we checked with Rick Perlstein–he wrote the book Nixonland.
READ our Q&A with Rick Perlstein HERE

How Women Are Changing the World: a Q&A with Rebecca Solnit–TheNation.com, 3/10

Read HERE
JW: We want to talk about the big picture. A revitalized feminist movement is changing things, despite what we see in the White House. How would you describe it?

Rebecca Solnit: There was an extraordinary set of years, 2012, 2013, 2014, where the rules really changed….finally women were in a position to say, “We’re not going to take this anymore. You can’t pretend it’s not happening.” And then to make some changes.