Mainstream Media | Munk Debates

Matt Taibbi

"Intellectual diversity that was normal in a newsroom once upon a time is vanishing. There’s an expectation now among younger reporters to be a team player devoted to pursuing the same ideological framework."

Matt Taibbi is an award-winning investigative reporter and one of America’s more recognizable literary voices.

Taibbi grew up admiring Russian writers, which led him to spend most of his early adult life in the former Soviet Union. After studying in Leningrad and graduating from Bard College in 1991, he worked as a freelance reporter for a number of years in and around Russia, including a period in Uzbekistan. In 1996 he moved to Mongolia and played in the Mongolian Basketball Association, where he was known as the "Mongolian Rodman." Taibbi eventually resettled in Moscow, where he co-founded an English-language newspaper called the eXile, a satirical biweekly known for investigative journalism and practical jokes.

Taibbi returned to the U.S. in 2002 and soon began work at Rolling Stone, where he won the National Magazine Award for commentary. He is best known for his coverage of four presidential campaigns and the 2008 financial crisis.

He has written ten books, including four New York Times bestsellers: The Great Derangement, Griftopia, The Divide, and Insane Clown President. His latest book about media division, Hate Inc., has been hailed by everyone from Joe Rogan to Publishers Weekly.

In 2020 he moved full time to the subscription platform Substack, where he is one of the most popular independent columnists in the country, with tens of thousands of subscribers.

Ben Bradlee Jr.

"Eliminating any media or wishing any media die is wrong. The business models of the mainstream newspapers will change, and have. The more voices we can get at this point, the better."

Ben Bradlee Jr. was a reporter and editor with The Boston Globe for 25 years and is the author of five books. He is currently working on a biography of Daniel Ellsberg, the father of whistleblowing in America, best known for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971, first to the New York Times, and then to other newspapers. 

Bradlee spent ten years as a reporter and fifteen years as an editor at The Boston Globe from 1979 to 2004. As deputy managing editor, he oversaw the Globe’s Pulitzer Prize–winning coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church from 2001 to 2002 and also supervised the production of a book on the subject, Betrayal, which Little, Brown published in June 2002. “Spotlight,’’ a major feature film on the Globe’s investigation, was released in the fall of 2015 and won two Academy Awards, one for best original screenplay and one for best picture. Bradlee was portrayed in the film by actor John Slattery. 

As a reporter, he served on the Spotlight Team, at the State House bureau, and as the paper’s roving national correspondent from 1982 to 1986. He covered the 1988 presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis and also reported overseas for the Globe from Afghanistan, South Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Vietnam.