This year’s Taricani Lecture is back to discuss “Investigative Journalism in the Digital Era.” PHOTO CREDIT: uri.edu
The 2022 Taricani Lecture entitled “Investigative Journalism in the Digital Era” will focus on the first amendment and its impact on data-driven investigative reporting.
The event, which will be held on April 5 at 5:00 p.m., will be moderated by John King, chief national correspondent at CNN and URI alum, and guest speakers Kathleen McGrory and Neil Bedi, investigative reporters for ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism newsroom.
The lecture series focuses on different topics related to the first amendment in journalism, according to Laurie White-Taricani, the president of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce and wife of the late James Taricani, the person which the lecture series was named after.
Ammina Kothari, journalism professor and director of the Harrington School of Communication and Media, said that McGrory and Bedi won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for their investigative reporting. The pair won the prize in Local Reporting for an investigation into a police agency’s predictive policing initiative that targeted, profiled and harassed families and schoolchildren.
She also mentioned that McGrory and Bedi were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting in 2019 for their work on patient fatalities. They investigated Johns Hopkins Hospital’s alarming death rates. The pair won a George Polk Award for their work.
According to Kothari, they will discuss their work along with the relationship between journalism and digital data analyses and how the first amendment allows journalists to hold people who abuse their political or financial power accountable and inform the public.
“Newsrooms are recognizing the need for more, you know, statistical analysis and other backgrounds to help us to share more meaningful and interactive stories,” Kothari said. “So, this is a unique pair, in the sense that they will be talking about the work they have specifically done, but it is also a reflection of some of the changes we’re seeing in the industry as well.”
Kothari also touched on the idea of mistrust in journalism and news today.
“Journalism has been getting a lot of criticism, some of it rightly, but some of it is also, you know, a little bit misguided,” Kothari said. “They don’t have a full understanding of what journalists do.”
She said that investigative journalism in particular is important because it’s where we see the most change and impact in our world. She said the type of work that goes into investigative reporting is different from more basic news stories, from fact-checking, verifying sources and data analysis.
White-Taricani hopes to see the lecture series become an annual event and says that the series is fitting for modern-day journalism, which is changing every day.
“With the passage of time, the issues change,” White-Taricani said. “Months ago, we never would have envisioned that we would be talking about, you know, Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns relative to Ukraine.”
Kothari plans to have future Taricani lectures in person when it is safe to do so, to give students opportunities to meet face to face with these prominent journalists. She also hopes to see the larger URI and Rhode Island community come to these events, as the issues they touch on impact everyone, not just journalists.