A group of reporters recently uncovered a closely held secret: the identity of the Israeli soldier who shot and killed renowned veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022. This is the story of how they figured it out.

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You can watch the documentary "Who Killed Shireen?" on Zeteo.

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Back in December, we did an episode about Pyrra, an AI-powered software that tracks sifts through the far corners of the internet – in some places you probably haven’t even heard of – to see what narratives are emerging from the people who post there. A lot of these are conspiracy theories, and also violent threats.

This week, we check back in with the creator of that software, Dr. Welton Chang, about what narratives he’s seeing, right now, that might soon make the jump from fringe shitposts to actually having an impact in the real world. 

Welton’s especially worried about the violent rhetoric aimed at one particular group of people, which has been topping the charts in recent weeks.

Welton is the creator of Pyrra Technologies, and Vice President for Digital Intelligence Solutions at AlertMedia. 

A listener asked us to clarify that the Romanian presidential elections we refer to in the beginning of this episode are first-round elections, meaning the winning candidate still had to win another round before becoming president.

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Where better to huddle up and discuss what to do about Rümeysa Öztürk and the chilling effect that is happening in journalism than on campus at Tufts University with the student journalists at The Tufts Daily?

This week Brian and Question Everything co-host a live event with the editor-in-chief and associate editor from The Tufts Daily – Arghya Thallapragada and Ellora Onion-De. Together they interview journalists and attorneys, including Carol Rose, part of Rümeysa's legal team and executive director of the Massachusetts ACLU, to learn what all happened to Rümeysa and why. What did her abduction by federal agents a month ago have to do with her immigration status as a Turkish graduate student studying child development, here on a student visa? Why did Secretary of State Marco Rubio say her Op-ed was cause for incarceration? Why is she still in ICE’s custody? And what happened to the constitutional protections around free speech and a free press that we depend on in a free society? 

Joined by former editor-in-chief of both the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, Marty Baron; First Amendment lawyer Robert Bertsche; and senior politics reporter at The Intercept Akela Lacey; the group wrestles in real time with the gravity of this moment, not just for Rümeysa Öztürk, but for all of us.

Read the Op-ed Rümeysa and others wrote that ran in The Tufts Daily a year ago in March.

Watch the video of federal agents in plainclothes, forcing Rümeysa Öztürk into an SUV on March 25, 2025.

Quick thing: In our discussion Carol Rose says the ACLU has filed 100 legal actions in President Trump’s first 100 days. The specific count on those is actually higher: the ACLU filed 110 legal actions in the Trump administration’s first 100 days.

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Last episode we discussed the campaign to overturn the Supreme Court decision that protects reporters’ ability to criticize and investigate people in power.

But even with that decision still in place, reporter David Enrich has discovered a shocking wave of legal attacks that is being waged on journalists in towns and cities across the country. These are often reporters at tiny, local outlets, trying to hold people accountable in their communities. 

And these legal claims don’t even have to succeed - and they frequently don’t - to shut down reporters.

Plus, Brian waxes poetic about the first amendment, under the night sky. 

This is part two of our series about David Enrich’s reporting from his book “Murder the Truth”. Listen to part one first – it’s called “Freedom of the press is great, until you’re the target.” 

In our newsletter this week – Brian tells a personal story about how his lawyers helped him fend off a legal threat. Check that out at:  www.kcrw.com/questioneverything

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For decades, a Supreme Court decision called New York Times vs Sullivan was widely beloved by people across the political spectrum. Hailed as a decision that gives the first amendment teeth and sets our country apart, as a place that prizes free speech.

But recently, right under our noses, some of the same people who once sang Times v Sullivan's praises have turned against it. 

The story of the growing movement that is trying to get the Supreme Court to overturn perhaps the strongest protection for speech and the press in America.

This is part one of a two part series about the book Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful, by Times investigative editor David Enrich.

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The best documentary filmmaker in America spent nearly five years of his life making a nine-hour masterpiece for Netflix. 

It will never see the light of day. 

After a nasty estate battle, the series won't be released. No one will ever see it.

In his first sit-down interview about this scandal, the filmmaker Ezra Edelman seeks catharsis – if not closure – in the fight for truth and control over the life story of Prince.

Thanks to “Pablo Torre Finds Out” for this incredible interview.

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Last year, we did an episode with Barton Gellman, who talked about the war games he was running with high-level military leaders and government officials to prepare for a second Trump term. 

A bunch of you have been asking us to have Barton back, to find out what he’s doing, now that the second Trump term is here. So we called him up.

Barton works at the Brennan Center for Justice.

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It’s easy to get frustrated with the charade reporters are supposed to keep up, where they pretend they don’t have opinions or feelings or any kind of human thoughts about a story they’re telling. Plenty of journalists have been trying to break out of that charade. But the decision to do that: it can be a fraught one, with real implications.

Dana Ballout struggled with this on a story she was investigating about Hassan Diab – a sociology professor who’s living as a free man in Canada, yet is convicted of a terrible crime in France. Dana and her co-host Alex Atack open up about their reporting on the series The Copernic Affair, and why Dana ultimately cut her own opinions out of the show, even though her co-host and editors wanted to include them. 

And this prompts Brian to revisit his own experience dropping the charade in a previous podcast he made with Hamza Syed, for The New York Times and Serial: The Trojan Horse Affair. 

You can check out The Copernic Affair wherever you get your podcasts or at https://www.canadaland.com/shows/the-copernic-affair/.

Same with The Trojan Horse Affair: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/podcasts/trojan-horse-affair.html

To get the phrase from Hamza’s interview that we’re asking people to remix into something danceable, sign up for Brian’s newsletter here: www.kcrw.com/questioneverything

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Do you have questions for us? If so, we want to talk to you!

If you have thoughts about Question Everything, critiques of our episodes, or anything you're curious about, that we're covering, or not covering…please tell us. We want to set up some conversations between listeners and Brian and our staff for an upcoming episode. Write to us at [email protected] and someone from our staff may reach out.

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Journalists jailed for an article they published. In America. How did this happen?

Brian tells the story of a reporting trip he took to Alabama, where two small-town journalists had been locked up, which led to one of the most honest - and surprising - conversations about journalism he’s had in a long time. 

Sign up for our newsletter to see some stories and pictures from a recent event Brian held in Alabama about his podcast S-Town. Including a photo of an S-Town inspired tattoo somebody was eager to show him. www.kcrw.com/questioneverything

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